


The Stars Above Us

by BotanyCameos



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gets explicit later. In potentially creepy ways., Hurt/Comfort, I like to mess with the things that might have happened differently, M/M, More tags and/or warnings to be added as the story progresses., Occasional mentions of non-con (but there's warnings in the chapter notes when it happens)., Slow Burn, The fic is not as horribly tragic as the prologue makes it seem., This one is a bit of a weird roller coaster., Though it is rather angsty., and the things that might have happened the same way, between the TOS and AOS timelines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-02-17 03:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2295506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BotanyCameos/pseuds/BotanyCameos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk thought he'd changed fate when he saved Khan from execution and his crew from experimentation.<br/>But maybe the wheel has come full circle, and it is the young captain who will pay in an indirect manner for Khan's crimes against the universe.</p><p>(Passed after the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, with some details changed such as Khan not being frozen.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Once more into the icy fingers of death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _It is the stars,_  
>  _The stars above us, govern our conditions._  
>  (King Lear, 4.3.37)

* * *

**Stardate 2259.321**  
(November 17th 2259)  
14:17pm

* * *

 

 

He was dying.

 

He was sure of it. He must be.

 

That was what it had felt like the previous time. The burning, the pain and the fear.

 

The cold seeping into his bones even as he felt like his body was burning out.

 

Only, this time he was alone at the very end. No Spock beyond the glass, talking to him and keeping the fear at bay.

 

In the reactor he had managed to stay strong for Spock. He was so scared, but the sight of his friend looking so pained had given him the willpower to stay in control and talk to Spock. This time, he was all alone.

 

Well, not at first. At first, when the explosion racked the ship mid-inspection, the engineering section of the USS Vina had been full of cadets. He'd been going through the motions with the inspection, thorough in his work but bored to tears, only one thought in his mind, to finish it so that he could return to his own ship, to his beloved Enterprise.

 

And then came the accident, and the radiation. The pain of dying all over again, worse than before since now he knew exactly what horror to expect.

 

Even then, his instincts had been stronger than the fear, and he had found himself shoving the cadets towards the exit as fast as he could, dragging and carrying the ones who had fallen, rushing to get everyone out, even ones who might already be dead, before the security doors closed.

 

Again and again he had rushed back in to help injured cadets, carrying those who could not walk. Kids, they were kids! Or so his sense of responsibility told him, but in truth they weren't that much younger than he himself. Past crises had given him a composure and strength he had not known he possessed.

 

He had gone above and beyond, but now it had been too much. The delta rays were searing his flesh, and he could barely hear the alarms blaring throughout the ship. Everyone was gone, it seemed, or at least he could no longer see or hear them.

 

With the absence of people in need of saving, Kirk’s heroics bled out, the spike of adrenaline now gone. And with the newfound aloneness, the fear returned, terror gripping him in the very depths of his soul.

 

"Spock, help me..."

 

Chapped lips breathed out the words instinctively, but he was too far gone to realize anymore that the Vulcan wasn't there, or to notice the emergency responders in hazmat gear storming the radiation-flooded corridor.

 

The world was dark and made of pain.

 

Before he lost consciousness completely, Jim found that his last thought was a puzzling one.  A memory of Khan, with those expressive green-blue eyes filled with gratitude, looking up at him while the augment knelt at his feet like an offering, telling Jim some crazy thing about being ready to die for his crew.

 

Jim wanted to refuse him, to shake his head in denial, but the pain was such he couldn't tell if his body was moving or not.

 

_I never wanted that. I never wanted any of this. But there's no going back and changing it now._

 

Jim’s heart was still beating when they put him on the gurney, but it stopped shortly after, giving way to hurried attempts to revive him as the response team prepared to beam him down to the medical facility.

 

 

 


	2. Enemy at the end of the tunnel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle:_  
>  _If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him._  
>  _That is renown'd for faith?_  
>  (Romeo and Juliet, 3.5.59-63)

* * *

**Stardate 2259.321**  
(November 17th 2259)  
Mid-afternoon

* * *

 

The Enterprise bridge crew was informed of the accident in spacedock shortly after the first responders had beamed down.

Spock and Bones were the first ones to make it to the hospital.

By then Kirk was already in intensive care and there was not much that could be done besides waiting and hoping he would survive.  
Unlike the previous time, where radiation poisoning had been the primary cause for his body shutting down, this time the radiation burns had been deeper and contributed to causing even more extensive damage. It was probably for the best that the others had not seen the state of the young captain when he was brought in, but the image would haunt Spock's mind for a long time, and even Bones was visibly shaken despite quickly slipping into his role as a doctor.

Uhura and then Scotty arrived shortly after the other two. They came running up the corridor, hurried and breathless, filled with worry and questions.

Spock had filled them in while they all waited for more news from Bones, who --as the captain's assigned physician-- had joined the medical team working on Kirk.

"It was just supposed to be a routine inspection. It was weird enough that they sent him of all people, to inspect a cadet vessel despite how young he is, but now this...?! How could this happen? He was only away from the Enterprise for a day and now... now..." Uhura's delicate fingers flitted over her cheeks and down her arms in nervous gestures as she spoke.

Spock relayed what he'd been told by Starfleet. "The vessel was an old class J starship. Almost a relic by today's technological standards. It was apparently poorly maintained." The Vulcan had a lost look on his face, his usually stoic voice sounding hollow, an indication of how hard he found it to remain in control of his emotions in the current situation.

Scotty wasn't fully convinced by Starfleet's official version of the facts. "All the same, I cannae believe any engineer in his right mind coulda missed this kind of damage before the inspection. According to the report, one of the baffle plates ruptured. How could that have happened without anyone noticing the deterioration before?!"

"I am puzzled by it as well, Mr. Scott," Spock agreed, "and I intend to launch a full-scale investigation into the matter as soon as I am at liberty to do so." The way the Vulcan's eyes strayed every so often in the direction of the operating room made clear what he meant -- he would not consider himself at liberty to go anywhere whatsoever until he was sure of his friend's survival. With Jim injured, however, Spock would be acting captain of the Enterprise until his recovery, and as such be in a stronger position to speak at the inquest and to better demand answers. Captains, even an acting one, had duties and prerogatives that far outweighed those of a commander.

Encouraged, Scotty asked, "You do that, Mister Spock. And I'll be on the investigation team when you get through to them. I hafta get me hands on their evidence and take a good close look at it meself." He ran a hand through his hair, his mind already going through the various possibilities.

Uhura was more focused on the immediate. "The damage done by the delta rays... Could it possibly be healed the way... the same way it was done last time?"

The words she left unspoken were present in all their minds. _The time he died to save us all._  
The time Spock lost himself to emotion and nearly killed a man for revenge. The time they used Khan's blood to defy nature and save a man from certain death.

"Dr. McCoy has already contacted Dr. Boyce, who was in charge of the captain's treatment last time. Starfleet has also been informed of that possibility and a request was placed with the probation office. I am not certain of the exact location where... Khan is serving his probation, but I believe they will call him in with a request to donate at least a blood sample to replicate the serum used last time. There is no way to know whether he will accept, but one can expect Starfleet will pressure him to." The way Spock voiced the augment's name made his distaste for the man plainly obvious.

It had been almost eight months since the Vengeance crashed into San Francisco, but it was still vivid in all their minds. And the more recent incident during the Enterprise repairs had only solidified the impression.

The Vulcan controlled himself as much as possible, before continuing in a nevertheless despondent tone, "However, Dr. McCoy is of the opinion that given the strain the treatment put on the captain's body last time, a second attempt is unlikely to succeed as well, especially considering Jim's current condition and how extensive the burns... the..."

Spock turned away from the two, discreetly pressing the back of his hand to his mouth and forcing himself to focus on anything but the memory of Jim laying on the gurney, horribly disfigured by the radiation burns, dying in front of him for the second time, his skin and flesh practically melting off of him right in front of Spock's eyes as he watched through the containment window in the intensive care unit.  
He may not be a doctor, but he had far too much scientific knowledge to ignore the fact that a radiation burn so extensive was unlikely to be anything but lethal. No matter the skill of the medical team, there was only so much a human body could take. The chances of the captain surviving this afternoon were extremely slim. Spock bit the inside of his cheek, tasting copper.

_Once more, seeing his last moments through a glass pane, unable to do anything to save him._

No amount of Vulcan meditation could ever wipe away this kind of horror.

Uhura was quickly at his side, one arm on his, her other hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. Always warm and loving, knowing exactly what he needed, she was his rock, now as it was after the first time Jim died.

They were all shaken. Scotty had tears in his eyes too, and at times even Uhura's gentle reassurances sounded like she might be trying to convince herself as much as Spock. They'd mourned Jim once already. Losing him a second time was too painful.

Just then, the turbolift doors at the end of the corridor opened, and with rapid steps in strode the man who was both their loathed nemesis and potentially their only hope.

_Khan Noonien Singh._

 

 

 

 

* * *

Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥


	3. Re-birth and Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _My stars shine darkly over me:_  
>  _The malignancy of my fate might perhaps_  
>  _distemper yours._  
>  (Twelfth Night, 2.1.3)
> 
>    
> And now we see if you're all keeping track of the stardates at the beginning of each chapter... ;D

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Early afternoon

* * *

 

_"Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight-hundred lives. **I dare you to do better.** "_

 

The space around him had been pitch black and nothing but a confusing void until that voice in particular, as if it had beckoned him to return, dragged him kicking and screaming, and threw him back out of the depths, out of that non-state that felt like drowning, like floating aimlessly through the darkness.

His eyes shot open suddenly, and he drew in a quick succession of rushed breaths, almost like a rattle.

It was the second time these words had dragged him out of being lost in the dark. Though this time it was more literal than the first.

He stared wide-eyed at the room he found himself in. Breathing was somewhat difficult, as if there was fluid in his lungs. He did so erratically, fighting for each gulp of air that came burning into him. At his side, a machine made a brief buzzing noise, possibly registering the moment when he nearly choked and had to squeeze his eyes shut to focus on inhaling and exhaling properly.

Birds chirped outside, an odd detail that seemed to clash with the gravity of the moment, at least to him, as he slipped from the unconscious nothingness of near-death to the unexpectedly bright world surrounding him.

In his stupor, he was unsure of where he was or even if this was the world of the living, up until his head lolled to the side and a familiar face came into his field of vision.

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic. You were _barely_ dead."

 

He would recognize that grumpy voice anywhere in the world. It brought with it a surge of warmth and a feeling of safety he hadn't realized he'd been missing so badly when he first woke up.

He stared at Bones while the doctor explained, "It was the transfusion that really took its toll. You were out cold for two weeks."

Jim was out of it enough that he didn't even object to the hand-scanner Bones was waving by his face, something he normally hated.

"Transfusion?"

"Your cells were heavily irradiated. We had no choice."

"Khan."

As soon as the name left his lips, his gaze shot to Bones' face for confirmation, but it wasn't really needed. It wasn't a question. He knew.

The instant he'd woken up, he'd inherently known. It became completely clear once Bones mentioned a transfusion, but he'd always known. He could practically _feel_ Khan, the strength, passion, and contradictions that made up the man, coursing through his veins.

And with that sobering certainty, the veil of dizziness that accompanied his sudden awakening lifted. He was more alert, or at least trying to be, his mind attempting to push away the convalescent exhaustion and race through the information, to process all its implications and retrieve all the elements he was missing.   
To Jim’s dismay, he noticed that at the moment it was extremely hard for him to even think properly. He felt like utter shit, his body and mind so worn out that breathing and staying conscious seemed to be the extent of his abilities at the moment, and even then, just barely. Speaking required significant effort.

Before he could ask anything, Bones was talking again, filling him in with morsels of information that Kirk absorbed in succession.

"Once we caught him, I synthesized a serum from his...'super blood'...   
Tell me, are you feeling... homicidal? Power mad? Despotic?"

The debacle on the _Vengeance_ notwithstanding, these were hardly fair ways to describe Khan; but they were a perfect example of Bones' wry humor, and the joke did its work, bringing a smile to Jim's lips. He quipped back, "No more than usual."

It wasn't enough however, to stop the captain from worrying about the idea of Bones somehow having attempted to catch Khan, or who else might have gotten injured in the attempt.

"How d'you catch him?"

"I didn't. "

Bones stepped aside to reveal Spock standing behind him. The Vulcan approached the bed gingerly, as if afraid that anything more than soft steps might somehow disturb the captain's frail condition. Spock's face was as controlled as ever, but Jim was just so happy to see him unharmed, that no amount of Vulcan impassivity could derail his good mood. A fond smile lit up the captain's face and he breathed out, "You saved my life."

From the sidelines, while fiddling with one of the machines monitoring Kirk, Bones could be heard grumpily correcting him with a "Uhura and I had something to do with it too." Jim spared him a glance but his attention was quickly drawn back to Spock, whose face held an unusually soft expression as he said, "You saved my life, captain. And the lives of your c-"

"Spock, just..."

There was so much he wanted to tell the Vulcan. Mostly, how grateful he was and how glad he was to see him alive and well. Although a small, non-conforming part of him wanted to ask Spock how he could manage to sound so formal after the heartbreaking closeness they had shared during his farewell in the reactor. It felt as if they were going backwards, to where they were when he'd lost the _Enterprise_ , on the moment when he tried to tell Spock how much he'd miss him, and received nothing but a blank stare in return. _It felt like a lifetime ago._

But Kirk knew better by now. He knew that Spock was only that way outwardly, and that their friendship was real and as present in his heart as in Kirk's own.

It was only a matter of coaxing the Vulcan to learn to express that feeling... Or to simply accept that no matter how closed-off Spock may at times behave, the bond between them would still be there.

Any attempts to voice these thoughts would have to wait until Kirk was able to do so without potentially passing out from lack of breath in the middle of it. For the time being, he contented himself with telling Spock a very heartfelt thank you.

And that was when the Vulcan surprised him yet again.

"You are welcome, Jim."

Despite the composure he kept, there was such obvious warmth and deep care in the way Spock replied, delivering each word with such evident joy over the captain's survival, that Vulcan traditionalists would no doubt frown deeply at such a blatant display of emotion, discreet as it may have been. And he’d used Kirk's first name, an added touch of warmth. His compromise, his way to try and be a little more open for his friend.

If he weren’t so tired, Jim could have leapt in surprise. Instead, he settled for grinning at Spock happily.

"Captain, now that we have ascertained you are doing well, I will comm the others to inform them."

Bones jumped right in, "Not in here, you won't! If you're going to use a communicator, you ought to get down to the cafeteria to do it. And don't tell everyone to come swarm Jim! He can't have any more visitors just yet. It's bad enough that you're here all the time, any more people would be too risky."

Bones huffed and fussed, shooing the Vulcan out and telling Jim to rest for now, promising that he'd be back later with a battery of antimicrobial hypos. Kirk shuddered, not looking forward to that.

An instant later, the automatic door swished open again, and a hand popped in to knock lightly on the wall beside it.  
"Hey, Jim, how are you doing? I was nearby and heard you had woken up."

Pleasantly surprised, Jim beamed at the new arrival. "José! How did you make it past Bones?!"

It had been a good while since Jim last saw his Academy friend but each time they met, they always seemed to pick up right where they had left off.

Already a captain when Kirk was a cadet, José Mendez was some years older and had regularly served as an instructor at the Academy, but he and Jim had similar natures and got along quite well, despite the age gap and difference in rank. The man had gone on to become one of Starfleet's youngest commodores, and had a promising career ahead of him in Starfleet Command. He and Jim kept tabs on each other and liked to go out for drinks whenever they were on shore leave in the same area.

"Oh, I have my methods. I deviously snuck past him when he went to get some medication."

Jim cracked up laughing as José entered the room making exaggerated stealthy motions to amuse him.

After the roller coaster of emotion he’d gone through by dying and coming back, and the immense relief combined with gratitude he'd felt on seeing his two closest friends safe and sound again, Jim was feeling drained, and welcomed the lightness of this interaction, tired as he might be. He also didn't want to think of what dreams he might have if he did give in to the tiredness and slept, so the distraction was doubly welcome.

"So José, what brings you here?"

"What, I can't have come to visit just to check on you?" Mendez sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to talk with Jim in a quieter voice, but hopefully not so close that it would be dangerous for him, considering the captain's weakened immune system after the radiation.

"With this timing...?"

"Well, okay, touché. I would have waited, but there’s the matter of a certain superman you had a run-in with recently..."

Jim froze, not expecting that.

"What happened to Khan?"

Kirk had intended to ask at some point -- José always knew everything that was going on, one way or another --, but he was surprised the man brought it up himself, especially so soon. All the more so since this didn't seem in any way to be an official visit from Starfleet Command. Jim tried to push away the fogginess of exhaustion to focus as much as possible. He had an odd sliver of worry in his heart, an inexplicable worry he probably shouldn't feel for a man who had fired on his ship.

 

"We'll know soon. It's why I'm here, actually. I was going to wait until normal visits were allowed, but when I heard they were going to wake you up from the induced coma today, I figured it would be a wasted opportunity if I didn't come ask you if you wanted me to transmit anything from you to the court. His trial is this afternoon. Well, 'trial'... It's a closed court-martial hearing the top brass are holding, on a need-to-know basis only. So whatever comes out of it, there will be nothing public. They'll likely use one of these exceptions to the death penalty law they tend to come up with, and finish off the damn bastard so they can bury this whole shitstorm at last. By the way, you didn't hear any of this from me. It's my neck on the line..."

José's talkative nature was normally a source of funny anecdotes and pleasant moments chatting, but this time his words left Jim feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach. He stared at his friend, agape and a bit breathless, not quite sure what to think or say, until he could gather himself enough to gasp out a somewhat shocked  "What... Why?"

Of all the things in that unexpected batch of news, somehow this was the one thing he clung to. _Why a closed court martial...?! It makes no sense whatsoever. Khan was never truly a member of Starfleet, and so judging him as one is... Unless..._

**_'Finish off the damn bastard so they can bury this whole shitstorm at last...'_ **

_The trial is a sham. They don’t want a civil hearing or any public one because they are going to do anything they can just to get rid of the inconvenient evidence of their leader's wrongdoings._  
It was almost a wonder they didn't take a page from Marcus' book and try to get rid of him or the _Enterprise_ too. A jolt of anger pierced through the bone-deep weariness and immense disappointment he was feeling.

Mistaking the intent of Jim's words, it was José's turn to look surprised. He'd assumed Kirk meant to ask why he was revealing the classified information, rather than why the trial was secret, and replied accordingly, "Well...you're a trusted friend and you went through hell because of this guy. I figured you deserved to know. And besides, you're practically one of us. Pike wanted you in too. He was just waiting until you were ready, a bit older and more experienced."

Just when Jim thought he couldn't be any more shocked, this new bomb dropped.

Finding it hard to breathe, he gasped for air and stared at his friend as if he wasn't quite sure of who the man was, all of a sudden. It occurred to Jim that he might be hyperventilating, and he wondered how far away Bones might be, should his lungs suddenly stop working.

Apparently, he must have been looking bad enough that Mendez started sharing similar thoughts. The commodore's eyes had strayed to the machine making sure Jim's vitals were okay. Jim ascribed this to the near-choking noise he'd made a moment ago.

"I'm fine. Tell me what the hell is going on. Why are they doing this?"

He couldn't ask about the rest yet. He was afraid to.

_One of us._

_Pike wanted you in too._

_No no no no no_

Marcus did say he'd been the one to get Pike to join Starfleet. And when Pike had recruited Jim, he hadn't talked of exploring or science and research. He'd described Starfleet as _a peace-keeping armada._ Pike had always been a military man, and Jim had always prided himself in being one too. _Peacekeepers._ Like Pike, and also his father before.

_Until Marcus twisted everything around, at least._

If anything, it was surprising that the thought of Pike being in Section 31 too had never occurred to him before.

He felt like throwing up.

He had to focus on something else. Anything else.

_Khan is going to die. The man who knows all of Marcus' dirty secrets is going to die. They will bury him, and likely his crew too. All so that no one finds out about it all._

There. At least, that was safer territory. Safe enough, at least. The urgency of the present situation would help him stay away from dangerous thoughts. As far as possible from thinking of Pike, or of what role he had in any of it all, or how deep in he was. Focus on anything but that.

José may not be able to know what he was thinking, but he could see Jim’s growing agitation, and the questions about the trial only made it even more evident.

"Jim, that guy's a rabid animal. You're lucky you're alive. " He pulled out a PADD and typed in some access codes, then paused for a second, locking eyes with Jim and saying, in a quieter voice, "I'm not supposed to be showing you this, but well, take a look."

It was security camera footage of Khan in a cell.

Presumably not long after the _Vengeance_ crash and the serum-synthesizing, but long enough after the capture that the augment was able to stand.

On a small PADD like this, the quality wasn't as good as the security camera footage of Khan in the streets of London which Jim had viewed in the past. But the feeling was similar enough that it still brought Jim an odd chill at the déjà-vu, watching the augment through this outside eye, like the night of the conference room attack.

Except Khan looked nothing like he did that night: no well-organized escape, no elegant wardrobe, none of the poise he'd displayed before even in dramatic moments.

The man in the video looked unkempt and insane. Five guards were attempting to restrain him, and failing. There was blood on his clothes and on his face, and his shoulder sat at an odd angle that was painful to see, but he seemed to be ignoring that. His hair fell over much of his face, not in the way it did on Kronos, where it had been messy but only dirty from the ash and sweat. Now it seemed to cling to his skin, matted with blood. Said skin, which he recalled had healed from bruises in a manner of hours after Kronos, was currently marred by dark bruises and nasty scrapes. His face was a mess. His jaw was maybe the worst part, swollen badly and not quite at a proper angle.

Looking closer, Jim was noticing more and more things that would be terribly unsettling to see on any prisoner, but particularly surprising on someone like Khan. Idly, he wondered how those injuries could possibly have been allowed to get this bad instead of receiving medical treatment, but then again, if the augment had been this recalcitrant all along, it was no wonder.

And yet, even so wounded, Khan kept on fighting. It was amazing that he could even move when there was so much visible damage, not to mention whatever injuries Jim couldn't see under the clothes.

The augment practically roared as he kicked one of the guards square in the chest, sending him flying and slamming against the nearby wall. The other four tried to drag him to the ground, without much success.  

José pointed at the guard on the ground in the video and explained, "The only reason that guy he kicked survived was because of how weakened the bastard is, thanks to the major beating he received from your first officer. And this video is from three days after capture. He's already able to fight like this even though he was barely conscious for the first two days from the concussion and intracranial bleeding. I saw a guard strike his broken arm with a stun baton to try and drop him, and he just screamed but didn't even go down."

Jim seemed shell-shocked, feeling increasingly lost while continuing to mentally catalogue the injuries he could spot in the video. Everything was becoming like a droning in the background for him, too horrible to process. Something in what José just said had made it through to him, however.

"Spock...did _this?"_

"Well... yeah. You died. And this guy almost escaped. I don't blame Commander Spock, even if he did lose it a bit... In fact, I don't think anyone would lose much sleep over this even if your communications officer hadn't managed to stop him from killing Khan. I saw the footage of that fight too, and let me tell you, I don't ever want to piss off a Vulcan. It was chilling, how many bones he broke on that guy. I'm pretty sure that if he'd hit the bastard one more time, he'd have killed him. And don't get me wrong, Jim. You know I don't condone prisoner mistreatment. But this fucker had it coming. He killed Chris."

A spike of pain that had nothing to do with his physical state shot through Jim anew.

_Pike._

_Pike dying on the ground, with a smoking hole in his chest._

No matter what his current uncertainties about Section 31 might be, Pike was still the closest thing to a father he'd ever had. He was certain Pike couldn't possibly be in as deep as Marcus had been, and he couldn't possibly shake off the crippling pain and anger that the vivid memory of his death brought up.

Guilt at failing to save his mentor festered inside the young captain, together with a burning need to make Khan suffer.

But then the image of the augment in the brig on the _Enterprise_ , telling him of what Marcus had done superimposed itself, combined with that of how injured he was in the video.

The fury wasn't gone. Nothing excused Pike's death. Jim wanted Khan to pay, and to pay hard. But the video was still playing on the PADD, and the guards had somehow subdued the augment, possibly by stunning him or using something else to drop him. Khan was now on the ground, still belligerent but wheezing and trying to get back up to keep fighting.   
Jim could see what José had told him, how Khan's continued attempts to resist and fight off his guards were reminiscent of a wild animal, continuing to struggle and fight no matter what injury it sustained. But it was hard to focus on hating him when seeing him so diminished.

And it only got worse when he realized Khan still thought his crew was dead.

It was hard to pick up everything that was being said on the video, but one of the guards told Khan something that sounded along the lines of "...at this rate they'll definitely put them all down, even the frozen ones.”

He could see Khan's face fall, undergoing a rapid transformation from complete shock to disbelief, hope, denial, and finally absolute terror as the gravity of the situation became a reality.

José looked embarrassed at this, all the more so when they heard the higher-ranking officer of the group confirm the threat and clarify that the cryotubes would be destroyed soon if Khan kept “giving them reason to believe he was nothing but a savage”, and that his behavior might be the only thing making a difference in when his people would be exterminated. He did not even offer the augment a shred of hope that good behavior might save them, he had the callousness of saying _“sooner or later”._

The young commodore fidgeted, clearly disagreeing with how things had been handled, but he didn't say anything against the men in the video. Nor did he comment on the absolutely appalled look Jim was sporting now.

A lesser man would rejoice in seeing his enemy humiliated and broken.

Kirk was no lesser man.

José sighed, reaching for the PADD with a sudden need to do damage control, "I think we’ve seen eno-"

Jim was having none of it.

“I _need_ to see this.”

Jim clung to the device, not letting the other man retrieve it or turn it off.

José deflated. If he wanted to, he could easily take the PADD by force, with Jim’s current condition it would require no effort at all, but he wouldn't do this to him. If anything, he sort of expected this would happen, knowing his friend's nature.

“I really think you don’t, especially in your state. But sure, watch it. I already broke the rules anyway, you might as well see it all.”

Jim’s eyes were riveted to the screen, while José looked noticeably embarrassed that his friend was witnessing such poor behavior on the part of some of his colleagues.

And then, it grew exponentially worse when Jim saw what he never thought he'd witness.

Khan, throwing aside his dignity and openly begging for the lives of his crew.

 

Jim knew Khan had already done it before, with Marcus. But knowing it and seeing it were two very different things.

_Did I look the same way when I begged Marcus on the bridge? When he sneered at me and told me he never had any intention to spare my crew?  Was I as desperate and frightened as Khan seems now? Knowing I had led them to death and there was nothing I could do to save them?_

 

The augment may have been his enemy, but Jim's stomach churned at the sight of Khan in such a position.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mendez is from canon, he's a TOS character.  
> The backstory about them becoming friends at the academy in particular is my own creation, but we know that they were indeed good friends in canon, and Mendez was a commodore during season 1.  
> He was willing to risk his life on a seemingly desperate situation just because Jim was going too. It later turned out to be an illusion and Mendez had not truly been on board that shuttle, but at the time Jim believed he was and did not find the behavior strange, which indicates it was consistent with Mendez' real personality. So presumably, they were close enough friends!  
> Also, he was knowledgeable in subspace gossip and had access to secret Starfleet command documents, which he let Jim read, (and even the ability to suspend a General Order!)  
> So... from that I extrapolated that he was ideal for the situation in this chapter.  
> Btw, in TOS Mendez was more formal when addressing Pike, but given that their circumstances were a bit changed this time around, I'm having him refer to Pike as "Chris" sometimes, like Kirk had done in TOS.
> 
> And a big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥


	4. The Iron Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!_  
>  Moby Dick  
> (On the inevitability of self-destructive vengeance.)
> 
>   

* * *

**Stardate 2259.321**  
(November 17th 2259)  
Late afternoon

* * *

 

 

Rain pattered steadily against the windows of the tiny apartment Starfleet had assigned Khan on the edge of the East Housing area of the Presidio in San Francisco.

The augment idly gazed at the stormy clouds, his fingertips pressed over the area they had drawn blood from, still feeling the puncture on his forearm as if it was still there, even though it was long sealed.

The sky was dark in the distance, the rain falling more heavily over the remains of Alcatraz that he'd clipped with the Vengeance.

He'd given such a large quantity of blood that if he had been a normal man, he would have significantly endangered himself. But as he was, it merely made him feel slightly faint; still well able to defend himself if needed, only a little slower and faster to tire down. A few large meals and enough sleep in the upcoming nights would probably fix most of it.

In the distance, the crash site was still visible, even several months later. Or to be exact, it was the absence of skyscrapers in that area that made it most conspicuous, even after the debris removal and rebuilding had long been underway.

Almost a year ago, the horrible devastation he’d wreaked upon the city had brutally shocked him and left him shaken when he stared down at it from the torn-open carcass of the ship-- and yet, not even that had managed to derail him from his path of vengeance and self-destruction. Only a furious Vulcan had managed to do that, and even then only by force.

Seeing his people die in front of him had momentarily torn his sanity from him, making him unable to focus on anything but the red haze demanding that he avenge them, and that he remain alive only long enough to make Starfleet pay for their deaths.

But now that he knew his family was alive and safe --albeit still parted from him-- the guilt over the destruction he'd caused overrode the anger at the past wrongs suffered.

It was one of the reasons he complied with Starfleet's petty demands and their puny chains. The foolish things imposed by the probation office. The work he was made to do for Starfleet. The hold they thought they had over him. And to add insult to injury, the pathetic piece of hardware secured around his ankle even now, its blinking light an ongoing offense to everything he was or had been.

He could have hacked the system and destroyed the device long ago. He could have broken free from these chains and so many others, and disappeared where Starfleet could never touch him again.

But they had so many other ways of keeping tabs on his movements. Facial recognition software all around the city that was ready to set off alarms if he wandered anywhere without permission, obligations to report to Starfleet at regular times lest he be immediately classified a fugitive, and so on.

Most importantly, there would be consequences if he overstepped any boundaries. Heavy consequences that he had no intention to set in motion.

  
So long as the price was himself, he had always been willing to pay it to ensure the wellbeing of his family.

He did the bare minimum Starfleet asked of him, but he made sure not to overtly break any of the rules they had established.

Not for now, at least.

If he had wanted to escape alone, he could easily have done it. But leaving alone was never something Khan would have chosen.

  
Close to a year ago, when his attempt to free his people from Marcus had failed, the only reason he had fled to Kronos alone was because he had thought his people were dead, and that remaining alive to make the admiral pay was the only thing he could do.

  
Now, things were radically different. With the possibility that his compliance with Starfleet could actually result in his people being given a new chance one day, everything was different. There was finally a real reason to try.

This too, was something he had to thank Kirk for. The idea that they might be taken out of cryostasis or be given a colony one day might yet end up turning out to be a fool's hope, but it was still hope, and more than he'd ever been given before.

So he would keep complying, bowing his head to people unworthy of commanding him, selling himself to Starfleet a little each day, in hopes to purchase a future for his people.

Up until Kirk's intervention, his loved ones had been at the mercy of Starfleet changing their mind or lying about their intentions at any time. They were promised certain death at best, or horrible experimentation at worst. He would have drowned Starfleet in blood before he let such a thing happen. He would have died a million times over to prevent that.

  
But this was all out of the equation now. They were still in stasis, but they were safe, finally. He no longer had to spend his days bending to anyone's whims to win them an additional day, an additional hour of life, as it had been under Marcus. And it was all thanks to Kirk.

He may not trust a word from Starfleet -- regarding with nothing but distrust and scorn their empty promises and grand claims of peace and good intentions -- but he trusted Kirk.

He sighed softly. That was precisely why things were so muddled now.

The apartment was chilly in the November weather. Khan's breath fogged up the window slightly as he stared from afar at the scar he'd left on the city. He'd never intended to do it. He wanted to hit Starfleet Headquarters, never the civilian population. He'd been too blind with grief and rage to see what would happen, and the ship had been too broken down to reach its target. As a result, the North Waterfront, the North Beach and part of Telegraph Hill were largely destroyed. The ship having hit Alcatraz first and having fallen in the water before careening into the buildings had been less destructive than if it had reached farther and hit full-on a heavily populated area, but that was little consolation. The destruction was still there, and so were all the lost lives. There was no going back. What was done was done, he could only live with that added layer of guilt.

Night was falling over San Francisco, darkness slowly descending upon the city.

The rain was leaving rivulets down the window panes, as if to emulate a visual reflection of his black mood.

 

At 00:15:07:45 he had received a call from a Doctor Boyce, former CMO of the Enterprise, informing him that Kirk had been badly injured, and asking if he would help.

According to the doctor, the hospital had contacted Starfleet's Probation Office, and they had informed Boyce that Khan had refused to even respond to the request. The old doctor had used his own connections to get a direct line to the section the augment was assigned to in order to insist he help. It was then that Khan first heard of the accident Kirk had been in.

 _If_ it really was an accident. It reeked of a Section 31 cover-up to get rid of an inconvenient hero-captain with a bad habit of disobeying unethical orders and asking too many questions.

Kirk was the golden boy of the Federation, savior of Earth once, potentially twice...but he was also the reason why Marcus' pet projects had been set back so far; officers with potential affiliation to Section 31 were under close scrutiny, and abundant cash flows had turned to trickles no longer able to easily fund secret projects with little or no accountability.

  
In other words, the young captain had painted a target over himself in more ways than one, the icing on the cake being his intervention on the matter of the augments.

Whether the accident was of a criminal nature or not, Starfleet's refusal to inform him of the matter left no doubt that at the very least, there were elements among the organization who wanted to minimize the chances of Kirk coming out alive.

Even if he hadn't already owed the man so much, Khan would have felt compelled to rush to his aid just to throw a wrench in their common enemies' plans.

As it was, with the debts he owed the captain, not helping Kirk was something he’d never even remotely have considered.

He rushed to the hospital as quickly as the infuriating probationary restrictions allowed, donated all the blood he was asked for and much more, and gave Boyce his personal communicator frequency so the man could contact him again in case they needed more blood. The frequency was almost certainly monitored by Starfleet -- Khan didn't believe for one moment their claims that it was a private channel -- but that wouldn’t matter.

He absentmindedly wiped a hand over the window pane, erasing the fog on the inside. There was no heating in his unit, not that it mattered to him.

  
The rain outside continued to rage, thick drops hitting the glass with a dull sound. It was nothing compared to the monsoons of India of his childhood, or even compared to the weather of London, where he had spent a large part of his year under Marcus, but the uncommon weather for San Francisco was vaguely disheartening. He used to find storms invigorating, but it was different now. Or at least here and now.

Not for the first time that afternoon, Khan pondered whether he should have simply stayed at the hospital until Kirk's condition was stable. He wasn't in the habit of questioning decisions he’d settled upon. Apparently that was yet another unexpected effect Kirk had on him.   
He'd left because there was nothing else he could do and he did not want to potentially cause any additional trouble for the captain. But it was oddly nerve-wracking to depend on the elderly doctor's promise to inform him of the outcome of the medical intervention, even for one such as him, whose patience had been tested for so long on the battlefield.

 

He whispered between his teeth, "Don't you dare die like this, Captain. I won't allow it."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥


	5. My head is bloody, but unbowed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Out of the night that covers me,_   
> _Black as the pit from pole to pole,_   
> _I thank whatever gods may be_   
> _For my unconquerable soul._
> 
> _In the fell clutch of circumstance_   
> _I have not winced nor cried aloud._   
> _Under the bludgeonings of chance_   
> _My head is bloody, but unbowed._
> 
> _Beyond this place of wrath and tears_   
> _Looms but the Horror of the shade,_   
> _And yet the menace of the years_   
> _Finds and shall find me unafraid._
> 
> _It matters not how strait the gate,_   
> _How charged with punishments the scroll,_   
> _I am the master of my fate,_   
> _I am the captain of my soul._
> 
> (Invictus)
> 
> * * *
> 
> Sorry this update took so long! But it makes up for it by being almost as long as the combined length of the previous 4 chapters, because I didn't want to cut before a certain scene...   
> 

 

* * *

 **Stardate 2259.60**  
(March 1st 2259)  
Night

* * *

 

 

He’d fought as long as he could, refusing to go down no matter what, ignoring the pain, the broken bones, the torn ligaments, the internal bleeding… Nothing mattered except for the sheer **_wrath_** that kept him going, as if it was the very air that sustained him and gave him enough energy when his body should have succumbed to its injuries long ago.

The world was red, red with the blood of his family, red with the fireball they vanished in, _murdered by Starfleet, murdered right as he was about to escape with them_ , right when they were finally going to be free and get away from Earth at last.

His eyes still burned from the many tears he had shed. Such was his sorrow, that despite his face being covered in dirt and blood, and marred with countless bruises, the tracks the tears had left were still clearly visible through the grime smeared on his skin. It added an even more haggard and crazed look to his expression.

_Joaquin, Kati, Otto, Joachim, Ling, Rodriguez, McPherson… And so many, so many more… I failed you. I failed you all..._

He’d been unconscious for most of the first two days after capture, too injured to function, but since the moment he’d woken up in a world where everyone he loved was dead, the grief and anger had become everything he had, everything he was.

  
Beyond the fact that he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in the three days since his capture, he simply thought that the sorrow had burned him so deeply that he was no longer able to cry, no longer had any tears left to wash away the pain, just the blood.

Food and drink no longer mattered, anyway. He only needed to survive long enough to exact vengeance for them, and then it would finally be over.

The only thing he had left was the need for revenge, and it consumed him, turning him into a feral thing. He fully intended to take out as many from Starfleet as he could before going down himself.

A part of him hoped that they would just finally kill him. Put him down at last and put an end to this miserable agony. There was no point in existing if he was alone. He’d lived for his family. Now that they no longer existed, there was no one in need of his protection.

The rest of him scorned himself for that weakness, for wanting to die to escape the pain.

Pain that he deserved for failing them. There wasn’t enough pain in the universe to make him pay for it. And yet, even with such thoughts, he already felt like he’d been feeling all the pain that was possible, ever since they died.

He had so many regrets.

In his dark musings, he wished Marcus had just killed him from the start.

Maybe someone else might have been luckier, or have taken a different path, and succeeded where he failed. Maybe Joaquin, with his strength, or Kati with her adaptative nature, or even Joachim, who showed such promise despite being the youngest of them... Maybe then they would all be alive.

If only he could have died in their stead.

Even in the thick of the fighting, these thoughts haunted him constantly.

He screamed with rage and despair and slammed his fist as hard as he could into the face of the nearest guard that was trying to tackle him. He ignored the horrible noise his own arm made, already-broken bone shards sliding against one another, tearing further into the flesh and muscle.

Another guard was grabbing his leg, and Khan did his best to kick both him and the third one that was trying to put him in a headlock. The augment bit down into that guard’s arm, and the crunching noise was so satisfying he didn’t even hear the crunching sound from his own head when the fourth guard’s baton hit him.

The pain from everything was so great he barely registered the additional injuries he sustained, too focused on trying to damage the enemy to be able to notice anything else.

There had been too many blows though; one moment he was standing and trying to reach to gouge out the eyes of one of the guards, and the next he was slamming face first on the ground, the wind knocked out of him by a heavy blow from another guard. It would seem his legs had finally betrayed him and refused to go on supporting him.

Unsurprisingly, a rain of baton blows instantly followed the moment the guards noticed their quarry had gone down. Stun batons delivered powerful jolts of electricity as well as blows, cracking additional bones and pushing the augment to the very edge of unconsciousness before a higher-ranking guard stopped the others, apparently so that he could taunt Khan rather than for the sake of ethics.

Wheezing and sluggishly bleeding all over the ground of the cell, both from the recent injuries and from slightly-older untreated ones, the augment was only barely aware of his surroundings, but still conscious enough that he was instinctively attempting to get back up to attack again.

He was vengeance personified now, _war itself_ , only alive to go on fighting.

_And die, hopefully die, soon,_ he thought between pangs of self-loathing.

A guard sneered at him, “Stay down, you piece of shit. You wanna die that badly?”

_Yes._

_But not by the hands of scum like all of you._

Ultimately, he still wanted to escape and go after the rest of Starfleet, to make an actual difference, by taking out its top brass.

  
But he realized that by now he was too damaged to make it outside and be functional, so he was getting ready to regretfully settle for the guards.

“Y-...You...are all guilty… Your _starfleet_...” The word was a curse on his lips, spat out with such intense hatred that it somehow silenced even the jeers from the guards. A line of bloody saliva was hanging between Khan’s lips and the ground, and it trembled softly as he spoke. The cell went dead silent as he spoke, his voice so broken and strained that it sounded more like a rattle than anything like his once-rich baritone. “...star...fleet…killed them all. And...I’ll drag...you all down…to hell…with me...for it. With my last...breath...I-”

Perhaps it was the incongruity of a man who looked close to death threatening a group of armed guards, or maybe it was the certainty of their impunity, but they had the gall to laugh.

The fury that laughter awakened in Khan was such that it nearly blinded him. It was so extreme that, even though a moment earlier he was barely able to move, he suddenly managed to drag himself to his knees, and was an instant away from doing the impossible and standing up, when one of the higher-ranking guards said something that made him suddenly freeze.

“The other seventy-two bastards are less dead than you, for now at least… But you keep pulling stunts like this and at this rate they'll definitely put you all down, even the frozen ones.”

It wasn’t even a proper threat, they were still laughing at him as if it didn’t even matter, as if his people were less than insects for someone to speak of their death so callously.

“...You _lie…_ ”

In a better world, his voice wouldn’t have sounded so broken and shaky. In a better world, his legs would be able to support him so he could grab the guard and force the truth out of him.

The higher-ranking guard seemed to find the whole situation unexpectedly amusing.

“It’s the truth. Wanna see?”

  
A quick connection on his PADD later, and the officer was talking with a guard in a different facility, the interior of which looked like a large storage facility.

“Hey Sean, show us the tubes!”

The man in the video angled the camera, and row upon row of cryotubes appeared in the dimly-lit hangar behind him. As far as it was possible to see, each was connected to the proper equipment and contained a live occupant.

The guard next to Khan crouched to show the video feed to the augment on the ground.

Khan had never counted rows and lines as fast in his life.

_Seventy-two._

_Seventy-two..._

_Seventy-two, seventy-two, seventytwoseventytwoseven t y t w o_

The augment’s face had fallen, undergoing a rapid transformation from complete shock to disbelief, hope and finally agonizing denial. His eyes were glued to the screen of the PADD and had a tinge of madness in them.

“It’s a lie…a trick…old footage…from when they were in Marcus’ Kelvin Archive warehouse…it has to be…”

His voice sounded pathetic in his own ears, so broken with hesitation and desperation. He wasn’t sure what frightened him more, that this tentative hope might be the lie he expected it to be, or that it could really be true. In which case, his people were still at the mercy of Starfleet, and he was in no condition to save them from whatever untold horrors may yet be coming for them.

The guard snorted.

“Sean, tell this bastard what day it is today so he’ll know we’re not pulling his leg.”

The man in the video confirmed the date, and even mentioned it had been two days since they had gotten the tubes out of the badly damaged _USS Enterprise_ after the clash with the _Vengeance_.

_There could be no lie then._ The pained denial on Khan’s face disappeared, replaced by the very embodiment of absolute terror as the gravity of the situation became a reality. His heart was hammering so hard in his chest that he thought it was going to burst.

The guard stood up, mocking him further as he did, “So now you know… If you keep giving us reason to believe you’re nothing but a savage, you’re only going to get them killed faster.”

The words that should have made him furious barely registered at all. Khan had thought he’d been wrung out so hard that he was emotionally drained beyond all ability to feel anything. He’d thought he had no tears left to shed. But all of a sudden, while he was still dazed and in shock, gaping at the small screen now farther away in the guard’s hands, he felt a warm wetness rolling down his face, which for once wasn’t blood. He angled his head, trying to keep a modicum of privacy so they wouldn’t see just how badly he was falling apart. The tears burned his tired eyes, leaving fiery trails down his cheeks.

He was already on his knees. It wasn’t that much further.

Putting his palms on the ground, he bent forward as much as he could without risking falling, assuming a supplicating position before he threw to the wind whatever he may have left of his dignity.

"Please! Don’t hurt any of them. I’ll do anything you want."

There was a rawness to his voice, bordering on something that might have been called panic on anyone other than Khan.

The guard --despite having initially backed away quickly when the augment moved-- gloated, taunting him, "Oh that's a nice change. You look good on your knees, begging… It’s where animals like you belong." He made a gesture with his foot, as if he was about to touch the augment’s head with the sole of his boot, but pulled back at the last minute, still remembering Khan’s earlier rampage and not wanting to push his luck, even now.

Khan grit his teeth, repulsed by the insults but too worried for his crew to give into temptation and rise to the obvious bait.

Instead, he tried appealing to them.

"Your starfleet evidently wants something from me or you would have killed me long ago. So I serve a purpose. Whatever it is that you want, I will cooperate, so long as my crew is unharmed."

 

To Khan’s surprise, they sneered, but rather than mock him further or take advantage of this new development, the higher-ranking guards began to leave the room, the lower ones automatically trickling behind them. Those he’d injured exited supporting each other and walking painfully.

It was a puzzling thing. From what he knew of their ilk, from what he’d seen confirmed under Marcus, he hadn’t expected them to leave him, especially now that they knew they held such power over him. Not even if they had been purely Starfleet, but with these all being Section 31 men, it was all the more strange. He had expected a completely different reaction, in fact.

Horrible as the alternative may have been, this departure didn't bode well. None of this did.

The jailers prudently waited until they were all on the other side of the armored door and it had been locked again before the one who had initiated this unexpected exodus launched from the little surveillance window, “And end up with more crushed heads? I don’t think so, no.”

  
Another added, “The only purpose you serve by staying alive is to show up at a trial before we put you down like the rabid thing you are. That way no one can claim there was no ‘due process’ after we kill you. Not that you deserve a trial anyway.”

“The other seventy-two bastards will go the same way as you, sooner or later. So don’t expect to see the rest of your little genocidal pack any time soon. Unless it’s in the afterlife when they’re no longer needed. We’ll cut them all up until we find out what makes you all tick.”

And even then, some of the guards laughed.

  
_They laughed, as they said it, as they spoke words that made them anything but human._

 

And Khan screamed, bellowed something full of rage and despair as he somehow managed to rise to his feet, fueled by pure rage.

He threw himself forward with all his strength, slamming into the high-security door hard enough that it shook ominously and made the two nearest guards outside step back with a surge of fear. Masonry dust trickled from the ceiling from the points where the impact against the door had been transmitted to the wall through the frame.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

  **Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Early afternoon

* * *

 

 

The impact was such that even from the camera feed on Mendez’ PADD, Jim could see that Khan’s shoulder -- _the good one, not the one Spock broke_ , he thought _-_ \- clearly came out of its socket, likely broken now as well.

The augment pummeled the door for a while, kicking and hitting it savagely, as he continued screaming, and then, apparently in a red haze, set about the complete destruction of whatever he could manage to rip off the walls or off the floor of the cell.

The camera went grey with static the moment he hit the lens and destroyed it, but it was momentarily possible to see the blood on it just before it fully shut off, from where the augment’s hand was injured.

Other than the soft buzzing of the medical machines, the only sounds breaking the heavy silence in Jim’s hospital room were the static noise from the broken camera recording on the PADD before it stopped, and the muffled sounds of Jim being overcome with emotion. This would have been hard enough to watch were he in perfect health, but it was even harder to deal with when he was so drained. José was dead-silent, staring at Jim with a mix of shame and worry.

If someone had previously told Kirk he would shed tears for Khan of all people, he would never have believed them.

The captain’s feelings were all over the place. The anger he felt for the augment remained, but Jim’s compassion was stronger than his thirst for vengeance, and try as he might, he could not convince himself that maybe Khan deserved whatever was coming for him.

A part of him was angry at himself, angry that he should feel so bad for the man who had killed Pike, and yet… Jim couldn’t help feeling upset when witnessing what the augment had gone through.

_And I’ve only had a glimpse of it! Was it always like that under Marcus? Was it like that in the past?_

_Marcus had said, “You saw what this man can do all by himself. Can you imagine what would happen if we woke up the rest of his crew?!”_

_Had humanity ever taken a different approach with augments? Had there ever been a time when they might have been given a chance to live in peace, rather than be condemned by default because of the danger they posed?_

_The augments rose to power to escape being the property of the labs, or made into cannon fodder for whatever war they were designed for… And even then, they were torn down, some deservedly. But in the end, all shared the same fate, regardless of whether they were guilty of anything or not._

Jim knew that despite what happened with Pike, Khan was on a completely different league from the genocidal tyrants of the Eugenics Wars.

_Khan was the **only** one of those rulers who was different; he hadn’t invaded other’s territories, he’d only fought defensive wars. He never committed massacres…_

_  
_Khan was certainly very dangerous, but ultimately he had truly wanted nothing but peace. Even with the bias of history being written by the victors after the augments had been overthrown, history books still clearly spoke of his benevolence and pursuit of peace, even when the enemy was on his doorstep.

  
It therefore felt even more unfair that the full force of humanity’s distrust of his people should fall squarely on Khan’s shoulders, of all augments.

And the fact that it was Starfleet that was taking this extreme view, even if it was through Section 31, made Jim physically ill. He wasn’t able to compartmentalize like others and act as if their hands were somehow clean, despite Section 31’s actions.

  
Finding out about this new horror while in such a weakened state didn’t help either. Jim breathed heavily between tears, trying to regain some control.

“How could you, José, how could you?!”

Kirk rasped out the words with such disappointment that it hurt the other man more than if he’d hit him.

“I… I wasn’t exactly involved, Jim! I’m with Starfleet Command, I’m not in the cells watching over each guard’s back.”

“You are one of them!! You’re…with _them_!!”

“I thought ‘they’ were ‘us’, Jim.”

“Us? Us?! This isn’t us! This isn’t Starfleet! As far as I’m concerned, I just watched a prisoner being tortured, in a prison cell under Starfleet’s authority! Look what Section 31 is doing to Starfleet! This, this is what they will turn Starfleet into!!”

“It’s…not what that was supposed to be. They were just trying to restrain him.”

 

But the words sounded hollow in his own ears, and guilt flushed Mendez’s face. He knew Jim was right. The blond’s next words only drove that idea further home.

Jim was almost shouting now, his voice breaking on the higher notes.

“No? No?! When they beat him until he couldn’t get up anymore and then told him they’d kill his family to make sure he stopped fighting? That wasn’t a form of torture?!! Really?! Could have fooled me!!”

It was a wonder no one had come to check on the commotion. Bones must have been elsewhere or have gone looking for Spock in the cafeteria, or he would have already heard and barged through the door ready to unleash the full force of his grumpy Southern disapproval.

Jim stopped shouting and attempted to catch his breath before continuing in a lower, but equally outraged, voice.

“I don’t… I don’t know what to say, José. This isn’t the Starfleet I signed up for. This isn’t right, and you know it.”

José was burning with shame now, but even though part of him agreed with Jim and had been uncomfortable with the situation from the start, another part of him still hurt too much to think as objectively as the captain. Maybe it made him less noble than Jim, or maybe just slower to forgive, but he couldn’t help it. The death of Pike had been too hard of a blow, and he’d never had the additional experiences with Khan to give him more context.

In a wavering voice that wasn’t quite sure of itself, José blurted out, "We... We wanted this Jim. We wanted revenge."

There was a certain tone of desperation in his voice that made it sound as though he were trying to convince himself as much as Jim.

Kirk stared at him in abject horror.

_Not like this. Nothing like this._

"No, José. I wanted justice."

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 **Stardate 2259.6X?**  
(March 2259, unknown day)  
Unknown Time

* * *

 

 

It had been days since he’d found out his crew was alive.

After the initial outburst, he’d cooled down significantly, partially thanks to the fact his body shut down, unable to keep up going with the amount of damage it had received.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious, so he only had a very vague idea of what day it was now.

When he woke, his wrists and ankles were securely cuffed to a gurney. Intravenous lines were attached to him, whether to infuse him with nutrients or simply with drugs to make him docile.

It would seem that for all their eagerness to execute him, they weren’t willing to lose their prisoner before that upcoming farce of a trial.

But now that he was no longer as visible of a threat, they had lost most of their fear to approach him, and the behavior he’d come to expect from them resumed.

Currently, doctors bustled around him, discussing the tissue samples they’d taken and what part of him to cut open and collect more samples from next. He felt drained of more than just blood, an impression that was likely true, seeing that, among other things, they had removed quite a bit of spinal fluid moments ago.

He’d experienced these procedures under Marcus as well, particularly intensely shortly after he was first found. But back then their need for his relative good health and functionality to perform covert operations and design weaponry had made that after the initial period, heavy experimentation on his body and its limits became less frequent.  
Now that he was a condemned man though, they had no qualms about performing all kinds of extensive research on him.

Khan gasped for breath, dizzily watching the people moving around him in a blur.

When he was a child, the threat of vivisection was their equivalent of what the bogeyman was for normal children; a dreadful thing the lab staff would dangle over their heads as the inevitable outcome if they failed to meet expectations, be it in tests or the battlefield. _‘Your scores are falling behind, kid! You better pick up the slack or we’ll have to scrap you!’_  
Failed subjects were dissected alive to collect samples and perform various tests in order to find out why and how they had failed, so as to improve the others. It was a constant fear in the back of their minds, pushing them to keep moving forward at any cost, lest they be the next ones strapped to a lab table. The bloody hazmat bags the children saw the staff regularly carry from the labs to the incinerator kept their fear alive and strong.

It was perhaps ironic that he’d succeeded at becoming better than anything they had intended him to be --though the labs certainly were displeased when that backfired and he freed his people from them. And yet the reward for being _better_ was to be cut open and treated like a lab specimen once more.

To have that childhood horror come true, the wheel coming full circle to drag him under, was an unexpected additional horror.

They did not even seem to consider him human; they talked about him as if he were barely sentient, or as if they didn’t realize he was conscious enough to feel and hear everything going on around him. It was like his early years all over again.

And yet, even with the drugs, there was a clear tension in the air when they handled him, when it was necessary to move him elsewhere or place him into a different position. They acted as if they were handling a sedated tiger, the product of their successful hunt and yet still inherently dangerous.

_Let them._

_Let them touch me over and over, cut me open countless times, conduct whatever experiments they want._

_Let them get used to my apparent lethargy and passivity._

_Let them grow careless._

_I will wait._

_I will survive._

_I will strike at the most opportune moment, when they least expect, when they are so used to having me at their mercy that they will never see it coming._

_Then, they will **bleed**._

_They will regret thinking they could imprison and threaten my people._

_I will free my people if it’s the very last thing I do before I die._

**_I will prevail._ **

 

 

\---

 

 

It had been days since then.

He imagined the day of the trial must be close, judging by the way the scum considerably increased their experiments and sample collecting in the last few days. He felt nauseous and there was not a part of his body that didn’t ache or burn.

_They need to get their time’s worth before their most convenient specimen is put down._

At least that meant that they weren’t going after his crew yet. That thought brought him some comfort.

He was slumped against the wall in a corner of his new cell, knees drawn to his chest, head drooping to the side. He’d been in this position for hours now, ever since the guards had brought him back from yet another round of experiments and had dropped him there, rather than on the small cot that served as his bed.

He wore a basic hospital gown, from under which various bandages peeked out, some stained through with blood. There were more parts of his body that were injured than ones that weren’t.

  
One of his wrists was heavily bandaged, and the other arm --the one with the worst fractures-- was in a cast, held against his chest by a sling with a quick-removal strap for easier access to his body during the experiments. His shoulders were both in light casts as well.

The ground and the walls reeked of disinfectant. He was weakened enough that they were afraid he might easily get a bad infection, and so everything around him was sanitized even further.

The smell was sickening and burned him. The way he breathed shallowly and with difficulty wasn’t helping either. His nose was clogged with dried blood and he had to inhale and exhale slowly through parted lips.

The ceiling camera on the opposite corner or the cell made a small whirring noise and moved around every so often, sweeping the cell before refocusing fully on him, like a dark eye always ominously watching him day and night.

No reaction. Only a dead gaze staring at nothing from behind tangled clumps of hair falling over his face. He didn’t move even when guards came into the room to carry him to the labs again.

He slept wherever they set him down, be it the bed or on the ground, and didn’t eat or drink, acting as if he didn’t even see the tray they’d set near him at the beginning, no matter how hungry he was.

The bluff paid off; after a few days, they gave up on bringing a tray and accepted that nutrients and hydration had to be given to him intravenously.

Attempts to talk to him or taunt him were met with no response whatsoever. Some of the guards joked that with how pale and unmoving he was, it would be hard to tell him apart from a broken marble statue or a damaged porcelain doll.

_It was working._

_It was all working._

They had already ceased to bother cuffing him every time. Most seemed to believe he was catatonic. He no longer reacted, even when some of the guards struck him, or worse. He just went on staring into nothingness and remained limp, as if his body was boneless, sliding down to the ground if they let go of him. Many had started to assume his spirit was finally broken, his mind nearly gone.

Behind those apparently dead eyes, a superior mind was racing feverishly with plans and ideas, constantly assessing the behavior of everyone around and calculating when the best time to act would be.

The only problem was he wasn’t healing well. They had finally tended to his wounds but the damage the experiments kept inflicting, and the lack of a proper chance to recuperate between them, left him in a lamentable state.

  
Even an augment needed at least a couple of weeks to heal a bone fracture, and in his case the process was significantly slowed down by the doctors reopening wounds to observe the differences in the healing process or to collect freshly-knit bone samples containing his augmented cells.

Between that and all the other material regularly collected from his body, be it blood, spinal fluid, samples from muscle mass or internal organs, he was only faking the apparent stupor and lack of responsiveness. The physical damage was entirely real, and had him struggling to remain as mentally functional as he could.

His condition helped him in his pretense of being harmless, but it was a serious disadvantage for his plan. In his current state, he had no chance whatsoever to escape the facility, even if he did manage to overpower the guards between trips to the lab. In an enclosed facility with such a high number of guards, he would be instantly recaptured before he managed to make it out of the building.

He would have to try his luck once they were outside, once they moved him for the trial.

If they were going to hold the hearing without him they could have just killed him at any time and lied about the date of his death. He was sure they would parade him around, even if just for the higher ranks of Starfleet, to give their sham the appearance of a real trial. They would need him there, for them to accuse and condemn him. And he would have his chance then.

Depending on how heavy the security might be, he would have to implement his escape plan either on the way there or just after. He would only get one go at it before the element of surprise was ruined.  
And only while they were outside would he get a chance to escape far enough without immediate recapture.  
Then, it would be a matter of finding a place to hide, and attempting to regain his strength and find where his crew was hidden.

It was like living the nightmare from London all over again, but from an even more precarious position this time around. If it had been hard enough to escape Marcus, even with the options he had then. Now his chances were so much slimmer.

He was no fool. He knew his likelihood of successfully escaping was extremely low. And even if he did succeed, the chances that he’d be able to find and free his people, especially before any of them was harmed, were even lower.

_But there was no other way._

He was alone against the world, and the survival of everyone he loved depended entirely on him. _It was always so._ And so he had to find a way, no matter the cost for himself.

There would be time to heal later. The only thing that mattered was to get his people, his family, away from Section 31 and any of the monsters who viewed them as nothing more than flesh and blood to fuel their twisted experiments. The sooner he acted, the higher the chance that more of them might survive; the thought of losing any of them was enough to tear him apart inside, but he realized it was a horrible inevitability with the time it would take him to regain his strength and get them out.

If only he weren’t alone. But there was no one else who would help them. No one -- _no one not in cryostasis, that is_ \-- that he could rely on or trust.

So he would have to manage to save them alone, somehow.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 **Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Afternoon

* * *

 

 

 

_“Get out!!”_ Kirk had hissed at Mendez minutes earlier, and José had gone, looking as though his friend’s disappointment had put the weight of the world onto his shoulders and washed away his chances of remaining blind to the injustice of it all.

Jim’s tears had dried, but Spock and Bones returned to the room --bickering about something or other on the way there-- to find him still overwrought about the recording and the thought of what Starfleet was about to condone.

“Good God, Jim! What happened?!” Tricorder in hand, Bones was immediately at his friend’s side, scanning him for anything amiss, any signs of pain or something the machines might have missed. Spock hovered nearby, alarmed but staying out of the doctor’s way so as to not interfere with any potential medical emergency.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, Bones… I’m okay, it’s just, it’s a long story, and hard to explain.”

“Hold that thought. The antibacterial hypos must be ready, I’ll go down to the lab to get them and then you’ll tell me everything, okay? Between myself and the green-blooded hobgoblin here, I’m sure we’ll find a solution to whatever it is. Don’t you worry.”

Jim had been thinking of a possible solution, but only the very basic lines of a plan had begun to form in his mind, and he kept running into obstacles about how to execute it.

Bones’ mention of Spock, however, struck a chord, and an idea suddenly flared to life in the forefront of Jim’s mind.

_Yes._

_That’s it._

_I know what to do._

It was a mad idea, and the likelihood of it failing was high, but he could never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try.

The instant Bones was out the door, Jim yanked the blanket off his body and swung his legs over the side of the bed, much to the Vulcan’s surprise.

As soon as Jim's toes touched the ground, Spock was there, gripping his forearms and supporting him when he swayed. Kirk leaned into his touch, having trouble standing by himself, and smiled at him, the complicity and trust in his gaze making Spock's heart skip a beat.

"Spock, I need to ask you a very important favor. You won't like it, but...as a friend, ple-"

The Vulcan interrupted him with an earnest look and a surprisingly gentle squeeze on his arm. "Anything, Jim. You don’t need to explain. Anything you want, I will assist you with."

Spock expected anything but the request that followed.

“Quick, swap clothes with me and help me sneak out of the building. I have a court-martial hearing to crash.”

"Jim...?"

“I need you to get a gurney and help me get downstairs. Then, huh...I’ll need your communicator or a PADD, and your uniform.” His mind racing at warp speed through the steps he’d need to take for his plan, Jim paused to recall the layout of the hospital from his academy days. “We’ll swap clothes in the bathroom by the lobby. I have to get out of here and get changed quick before Bones gets back."

_Bones would blow a fuse if I told him. With the best intentions, of course. But he would be too worried to let me do this and there isn’t an instant to lose._

Spock was staring at him with an eyebrow raised dangerously close to his hairline. The silent internal monologue going through the Vulcan’s mind was a thing to behold.

The Vulcan hazarded, "Captain...all things aside, it would be illogical for you to go outside in your present condition. Your immune system is much too weakened. The magnitude of the neutropenia you are still suffering from as a result of the radiation would put you at a significant risk of infection and generalized sepsis if you came into contact with any pathogen. At the very least, you should wait until Dr. McCoy finishes administering this afternoon's dose of your antimicrobial therapy."

Even with his earlier promise, Spock hesitated to grant Jim’s wishes, out of fear that his friend might be momentarily out of his mind and at risk of endangering himself. The Vulcan was considering calling for the doctor just in case, when the next request perplexed him further.

"No, I can't wait. It’s today! I have to get there in time, and I still have to make an urgent call...” Jim licked dry lips, catching his breath. “...to New Vulcan. I have an even worse favor to ask you. Well, you...the _other_ you."

 

Spock had a _very_ bad feeling about where this was going, illogical as such a thing may be…

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the stuff we see in Jim's thoughts about Khan's past and Khan being different from the augment rulers who committed genocide, is actually from canon Star Trek. Spock's accusation in STID was to stall for time for Bones to get the torpedoes ready, Khan didn't actually do what Spock was accusing him of.
> 
> And as for Joaquin & Joachim both being mentioned, since they are so different between Space Seed and TWOK, I'm just going with my idea that they're different people, with similar names due to how the nurses in the labs would name them by cycles.
> 
>  
> 
> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥


	6. All Aboard the Pequod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”_  
>  Moby Dick
> 
> * * *
> 
>  **Warning:** There’s a noncon scene in this chapter.  
>  It’s at the end of the chapter and can totally be skipped if noncon fic makes you uncomfortable.

* * *

**Stardate 2259.322**  
(November 18th 2259)  
Morning

* * *

 

 

The damp of the previous night’s rain had not lifted yet, and already the bridge crew of the _Enterprise_ was in a gloomy disposition with the latest news.

Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the accident that nearly claimed Jim Kirk’s life, and the _Enterprise_ was ordered to prepare for immediate departure, while its captain lay in hospital still caught between life and death.

Bones threw the PADD with the official orders down on the couch of his San Francisco flat far harder than such a device was normally meant to withstand. It bounced off a seat cushion and skidded a bit before falling on the floor with a worrisome noise.

“Those damn bastards! What do they take us for?!”

“Calm yourself, Doctor. In a situation such as this, remaining in control of our emotions is vita-”

“Calm?! _Calm_ , you pointy-eared bastard?! Don’t you see what they are doing?! They-”

“I assure you I am well aware of how suspicious the situation is, Doctor!”

Spock had raised his voice slightly, something that would have gone unnoticed if it had been anyone else but the Vulcan.

Coming from him, the minuscule increase in volume and the raw edge to his voice silenced even the recalcitrant doctor. They all stared at Spock as if waiting for him to somehow make sense of the situation they found themselves in, as if he could suddenly come up with a solution.

Spock seized the sudden startled silence and plowed on, “My suspicion is precisely why I have asked you all to gather away from an official Starfleet location. You have all received these orders. We are to report immediately to the _Enterprise_ under Captain Decker’s provisory command. As the doctor stated in more colorful terms, this situation is highly irregular.”

Chekov, the youngest of the group, could no longer restrain himself. “Zhey know zhat we would prefer to remain grounded until the Captain’s condeetion is stabilized. Or until ve can know if he’ll be okay, at least. And eet doesn’t explain vhy they passed you over, Sir.” The young man grimaced as he said the last sentence, regretting his choice of words as they left his lips. The dismay and worry that he might have rumpled his commander’s dignity were obvious on his boyish face, and would have been endearing and amusing if the situation had not been so dramatic. “Ah, I’m sorry, Commander. I do not mean to offend.”

“There’s no offense, Mr. Chekov. And you are quite correct. There’s nothing in the mission orders that justifies a sudden rushed departure like this, nor the unnecessary exception to the customary tradition of having the first officer of a ship serve as acting captain in the event of the captain being injured, until his recovery.”

It was hard to view this as anything but a cover-up of some sort, or at the very least, an attempt to thwart them from potentially looking too closely at the details of the accident.

A cloud passed over the Vulcan’s features, not out of injured pride, but of worry for his captain.  
Uhura stepped closer, pressing a comforting touch to his forearm. Her eyes looked shinier than usual, from lack of sleep and unshed tears at the memory of how broken Kirk had looked in the hospital. He was so much more than just their captain.

The previous night had been spent mostly at the hospital, waiting for any news about Kirk’s state that had trickled out of the operating room as the hours progressed.

McCoy’s eyes were bloodshot as well. He’d spent much of the night working on Kirk, he and Boyce alternating between emergency surgery to repair radiation damage and the preparation of the serum. At least they had large quantities of Khan’s blood to work with, which was an immense help. That Khan had not only come to donate his blood, but offered such large amounts -- much more than they had initially asked of him -- had surprised Bones greatly.

Truthfully, when he’d seen Khan arrive at the hospital he’d instinctively wanted to throw him out. He still remembered the lamentable state Jim had been in after his most recent encounter with the augment, after the captain’s kindness had pushed him to not only intervene in the trial, but allow Khan on board the _Enterprise_ once more. Jim had a habit of trying to protect everyone around him, and that always inevitably got him in trouble. Bones had been the one to pick up the pieces after Khan had ultimately departed, so he felt particularly vicious towards the augment, even more so than they’d already been feeling after everything that happened prior to the trial. It felt more personal now, after all Jim had done for the augment.

If not for Jim needing the man’s blood to survive --and for the fact Khan could probably easily break him in two single-handedly-- McCoy would have bodily thrown the augment out of the hospital. Instead, he grumbled about Khan being there unrestrained and jabbed the needle into his arm perhaps a little harder than needed.

It had been dawn when McCoy had finally left the hospital, and only after Boyce had practically booted him out, telling him to go home and sleep a few hours. Bones strongly intended to simply take a quick shower and change, before heading straight back to the hospital and claiming he had napped enough. McCoy hoped he might find a way to improve on the serum they’d started administering to Jim. The whole thing was a nightmare, even without the unpleasant flashbacks it caused, McCoy unhappily recalling the previous time the captain had been in a coma, his life hanging in the balance of some miracle brought about by Khan’s blood.

None of them had slept much, even those who weren’t involved in the medical procedure, or those who didn’t stay all night. Scotty had returned to the Enterprise that evening, and Chekov and Sulu had gone to their Starfleet-assigned apartments a bit later too, but they had all taken their worries for their captain with them.

Spock had remained in the hospital all night in case there were any new development in Jim’s state. Uhura did the same and slept a few uncomfortable hours on waiting room chairs.

The Vulcan had left not long after the doctor, planning to compose himself and head over to Starfleet Headquarters in order to use his position as acting captain to request to join the investigation into the accident, as soon as the people able to authorize that arrived.

Before he could do any of that though, the official orders had dropped on them all like a bomb, prompting this hurried gathering.

Spock rationalized, “A groupwide refusal to follow these orders would be considered a mutiny, so I urge you all to report to the ship. I will remain behind so that only one of us will have disobeyed command.”

“You? Mr. ‘Vulcans-can’t-lie’ wants to be the one committing mutiny? That’s going to go well! And it’s not like they’ll fail to notice the ship is missing its first officer, either.”

“Dr. McCoy, I fail to see how your sarcasm will-”

“It’s simple. I’m Jim’s appointed physician. I have more of an excuse. I’ll claim I was in and out of surgery so much that I only saw the orders after the ship had left. Dr. M’Benga will replace me as CMO for the mission. That way we’ll draw less attention to our suspicions and I’ll stay behind to keep an eye out for anything strange.”

Even Spock had to resign himself to the idea that the doctor’s solution was better, and fall back on the thought that he’d get to observe Captain Matt Decker up close and try to find out if he knew anything.

In the end, it was decided that both McCoy and Scotty would remain behind. Bones, because he had the best excuse, and Scotty because the engineer pointed out how he was extremely skilled at shoving his nose in classified information he wasn’t supposed to be looking into, and was willing to risk a demerit on his record by claiming he’d been too hungover to see the orders until it had been too late --if Starfleet wanted to give them last minute orders, they shouldn’t be surprised if some of the crew didn’t get them in time.

 

 

 

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Afternoon

* * *

 

The comm-pic flickered to life, clear enough and yet nowhere as detailed on a tiny screen as it would have been on the large viewscreen of a ship.

_The Enterprise spoils you for civil life. There’s no comparison._

A dignified elderly Vulcan’s image materialized on the small screen of the PADD Spock had lent Jim, and immediately broke Vulcan composure by smiling warmly as soon as he was greeted by the sight of the young captain.

“Jim. It is remarkably pleasing to see you awake and well, my friend.”

“Thank you, Spock. It’s good to see you too.” Jim returned the smile just as sincerely, even though it would never feel any less weird that there were two Spocks, and that this one felt as close to him as if he’d known him for years. Jim pushed aside the guilt and plunged in, “I’m going to get straight to the point, and I’m so terribly sorry for what I’m about to ask of you. Frankly, I have no right to ask you to help me with this...”

 

\---

 

Some moments and a somewhat-summarized though convoluted explanation later, the younger Spock was staring at Jim as if the captain had grown a second head, while the older one was attempting to dissuade him of his idea.

“Jim. You cannot possibly be serious about this.”

Dissuading Jim of a dangerously heroic plan was an useless pursuit.

“Please, Spock. I just ask that you help with this part of the plan, and I will take care of the rest. I promise it will be okay and he won’t come after us once we ensure his crew’s safety. The Federation prohibits genetic engineering but surely that doesn’t mean the augments that already exist should be put down! Please don’t tell me you would consider something so inhumane to be logical!”

The old Vulcan’s face contorted into a pained expression, logic and heart warring over what was morally right versus Jim’s safety. The young captain pushed on, “I can’t possibly stand by and let this happen; I would never forgive myself. It doesn’t matter what he did to us, nothing excuses what they’re about to do to him, or to his people. We are all guilty if we let this happen.”

“But Jim... You don’t know this man like I do.” The old Vulcan’s voice sounded small and defeated, as if he already knew he was arguing a lost cause. But from the edgy tone at the end of that sentence, it sounded like Spock considered that ‘man’ was not necessarily a term Khan deserved. “You don’t know what he is capable of. He is a beast, a ruthless beast.”

“And so are we if we let them put him down without even giving him a chance.”

“No, Jim, no. Please consider what you are asking of me and the danger involved.”

“Spock, please. Help me with this…please. It’s the only thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

As if the rest of the conversation hadn’t been painful enough already, the desperate look in Jim’s eyes as he practically begged him could have shattered Spock’s heart.  
Jim pressed further, very much unknowingly twisting the blade in the wound, “You said that you have been and always would be my friend. And later you said that I could count on you for anything. This is the one thing I need help with…”

Jim knew the enormity of what he was asking, but he had no other way to stop Starfleet. His sense of justice wouldn’t allow itself to be silenced by the guilt he felt about asking for such a huge favor from Spock.

The look on Spock’s face nearly broke Jim.

“Jim… You will have what you want. Even if you had not asked this of me first, the Vulcan Council might have granted it to you on the basis of your intervention during Nero’s attack having saved our people. But since you came to me, I will ensure that there will be no opposition to what you’ve asked for, and that the task is fulfilled to your specifications. I can only hope this will not cause more tragedy than it might solve.”

“Thank you, Spock. Thank you, so much. I promise I will do everything to ensure you don’t have cause to regret anything.”

Spock ended the comm-pic without saying he felt that the promise Jim had made was an impossible one, even for a man who didn’t believe in no-win scenarios.

 

 

 

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Earlier that day

* * *

 

Khan was exultant.

As much as it was possible to be while still locked in a cell and while having to remain unmoving as to not give away that he was conscious.

His pretense of being completely unresponsive had borne its fruit.

He lay in a heap on his side on the low cot in his cell, in the same place where they had last dropped him. He wore no cuffs --lately the guards had considered it unnecessary for a prisoner who hadn’t moved of his own volition for days.  
And because they thought him catatonic, they had also begun talking to each other more freely around him now.

He now knew the trial was finally going to be held today at Starfleet Headquarters, and even knew roughly what time they would be leaving for it.

Not only that, but as a most fortunate and unexpected side effect, after days of incessant experimenting and sample-collecting that had left him drained and exhausted, even the lab staff were starting to grow careless around him. Earlier, one of the junior technicians who strapped him to the table had done a poor prep job and had failed to properly open the valve on his IV. As a result, the dose of drugs supposed to make him docile and sluggish had been decreased.

Thanks to that, Khan now felt more alert than he had in days. This didn't change the fact his body was a mess and even rising from the cot would be a feat, considering all the injuries and not-yet-mended bones he had, but it was still a significant improvement in his situation.

When he'd realized the drugs weren't being dispensed correctly, he'd been terribly tempted to strike as soon as the straps holding him to the table were removed, or later in the corridor when the guards carried him back to his cell.

But drugs or not, he was still terribly weakened and he knew that attempting escape now would result in his recapture before he could get out of the building. This was a high-security facility, and he only had enough energy to fight so many guards. He had to bide his time and strike only once they were outside. The key to his escape would be to evade recapture just long enough to blend in with the civilian population and disappear. Everything else would come later.

Knowing the trial was today had Khan’s mind racing with both excitement and last-minute planning. Keeping up the act a while longer would be easy enough, and then he would be outside. Only a few more hours remained until he inevitably broke free and set off on his path to find and rescue his people --once he had recuperated a little, at least.

The heavy door of the cell opened again and a burly guard walked in, closing it behind himself. The auto-lock clicked and Khan had to once more suppress the temptation of initiating his escape right then and there.

_Patience. Only a little longer now._

From the conversation he’d overheard earlier between the guards outside his cell, Khan had learned the trial would be in the afternoon. But it was still too early and he was never escorted anywhere by a single guard, so it was likely this was just some sort of inspection.

_Or worse._

‘Worse’ happened every so often. The profession of ‘guard in illegal secret prisons’ didn’t exactly attract the best of the recruits in any military body, unofficial internal branch or other. Most were little more than giant-sized brutes --picked for their muscle and ability to stay quiet about shady dealings rather than for their merit -- and who viewed him as little more than a lab animal at best, or a monster at worst. Although he was certain that the latter ones, who disguised their contempt as self-righteousness by bringing up the _Vengeance_ crash before abusing him, were likely doing so more to make excuses and consider themselves morally superior rather than because they truly cared about the people who had perished.  
Ironically, _he_ cared. The sight of the destruction in the streets --which he’d seen from the crippled ship after it had finally stopped-- still haunted him. And so he took the beatings and other abuse dished out every so often, both because he had to in order to seem as broken as he wanted them to think he was, and because part of him felt like each blow was a small form of penance.

But beatings were one thing. That was only physical pain. It was somewhat humiliating, but not as awful as the touches from some of the guards, which made his skin crawl. Things some of them would do to him as they carried him back and forth to the labs, or as they dropped him back in the cell after a round of tests. It was too similar to things that Marcus and others had done. So similar that it made him want to jump out of his skin and annihilate them all.

And burn all of his skin off so he could never feel it again.

 

He couldn’t move his head to look up at the guard without giving his conscious state away, but there was no need. The moment the guard circled around the cot and leaned over him, running the cold tip of his baton up along Khan’s exposed leg, the augment knew it was one of _those_ kinds of guards.

He suppressed a shudder of revulsion as the cold metal reached the top of his thigh and hooked under the hem of the flimsy hospital gown he was made to wear for easier access to his body in the labs. It covered barely anything, and in his current position, on his side with his legs together, it left his back completely exposed once the guard lifted the paper-like cloth out of the way, flipping the flaps of it open. Khan’s back was a mess and bloody bandages littered his body. Light-casts still encased certain bones and there was a particularly nasty bloody bandage around his waist at the base of the spine, some centimeters above his rump.

Khan steeled himself as the guard paused to scrutinize his face, looking for signs of a reaction; there was none to be found, the augment wore only a vague neutral expression and the same dead gaze as before, staring at nothing in particular as if he was only there in body.

Emboldened by this, the guard slid the baton further, tracing the curve of the prisoner’s bare ass before pressing the cold length up across it to see if the muscles would clench. One press of a button and the device would release a considerable electric discharge. In Khan’s current state, it would likely drop him in one hit, and there was no way to know if he would regain consciousness in time for the moment to make his escape. He forced himself to show no reaction whatsoever. Both cheeks of his backside remained relaxed, soft and yielding against the pressure of the hard material. The guard snickered and set down the baton, splaying a crude hand on one of those enticing mounds, thick-gloved fingers tugging and pinching at the soft flesh in a greedy manner.

Internally, Khan was calculating what would happen if he were to suddenly lunge up and take the guard by surprise -- now that the baton was down on the slim mattress, he should be able to do it before the guard could react fast enough. The man was significantly taller and bulkier, but that was a minor obstacle to the strength or intelligence of an augment, even as reduced as Khan was by his injuries and the traces of drugs still in his system. As long as he took the guard by surprise and disabled him fast enough before he could call for help or stun Khan, the guard would stand no chance. Provided that Khan could move fast enough with all the injuries he had, that was. But it should be feasible, with only one guard.

Crushing his skull wouldn’t be anywhere as satisfying as crushing Marcus’ had been, but it would abate the repulsive feeling the man’s hands left on his skin, perhaps. That feeling as if his skin wanted to peel off his body.

But that would mean losing all chance of saving his crew. Khan had no way to get out of the locked cell, and abandoning the only advantage he had would only doom them all.

Starfleet would carry through with their mockery of a trial without him having a chance of escape, he would be executed, and his people would be at the mercy of these same monsters. If he tried anything here and now, he would lose _everything_.

The guard’s brutish hands seized him by the hips, heavy fingers digging new bruises into already-battered flesh, and with a grunt and a swift movement, he dragged the prisoner closer to the edge of the cot, lifting his backside up in the air. Khan clenched his teeth, a surge of cold hatred flaring inside him like a wave of pure acid.

The jeers and verbal abuse were nothing. The beatings, he was used to. _Physical pain was nothing._ He was superior. _Better_. He could take physical pain all day and still withstand it so much better than a normal human. He could survive things that were unthinkable. _Had_ survived countless ones, in fact.

_But this. This was something else._

Maybe it was because this reminded him so much of some of the worst moments of his childhood, when some of the staff in the labs which had created them had decided that, since the augmented children weren’t considered ‘real’ humans, it was not immoral to treat them as living sex dolls. They rationalized this by telling themselves that they had made the augments, given them life, and therefore had power of life and death over them… And everything in between.

The first person Khan had ever killed had been one of those scientists. And if not for that childhood murder never having being linked to him, he would have been executed for it, scrapped as defective for going against his makers rather than forgiven for standing up against a monstrous abuser.

He’d endured it for years before killing the culprit when the man decided to try the same thing on little Joachim, who was so much younger and defenseless at that time. Khan had managed to save the younger boy but somehow, he had never managed to save himself; as if condemned to have this same horror revisited upon his body over and over throughout his life, like a curse that could never be fully lifted, even centuries later.

Back when he was younger, some had mused that perhaps the perfection inherent to all augments, the beauty they all were bred with and which made them irresistibly desirable to anyone who saw them, was a curse rather than a blessing. It was part of their magnetic attraction when they were in a position of power, but more often than not, superior as they may be, augments had not been in positions of power, and that beauty had only attracted further abuse from their captors.

There was no clearer proof of that than the fact that even in a so-called civilized time which wanted itself a would-be enlightened utopia, this same crime was one of the first things that he’d experienced after the Botany Bay was found, and once Section 31 had made it clear that he had no choice but submit to them. And now it was going to happen yet again, unless he stopped it.

_Stop it and lose them all, leaving them to this same fate..._

_Or take it and maintain the illusion of helplessness in order to potentially win a chance to escape later. In order to save them._

The choice was clear in his mind all along.

Many of the other rulers during the war had made the mistake of thinking that a king, a leader, was someone who took power for themselves and had people submit to them. Khan knew better. He knew that the nature of ruling, of leading, was much more than merely being at the top. It was not something owed, but something earned, and with it, came the responsibility to do everything you had to do to protect your people. Whether that meant dirtying your hands so that others didn’t have to, or suffering through whatever was needed to in order to ensure the survival and safety of his people. He knew his family would have done the same for him. And he never wanted them to have to live through any of this again.

So he clenched his teeth and held onto his considerable willpower to keep himself still and his muscles lax, even as he went cold when he heard the guard unzip behind him. At least the position he was now in, with his face pressed against the bedding and his tangled hair spilling over part of it, would conceal his expression in case he couldn’t keep all of the fury off his face as it happened.

He told himself it was anger, and not fear, that made him quake internally as the guard spread him open. A man like Khan could not allow himself uncontrollable fears no matter the amount of past trauma that might have borne them. A man like Khan had to hold it all in and never lose his grip on his perfect control. So he swallowed the knot in his throat and forced himself not to tremble in response to the loathed familiar sensation of something foreign attempting to split him open.

He wanted to throw up.

_Later, there would be a time for vengeance._

For now, all he could do was commit the guard’s face to memory like he’d done with so many others, like he’d done throughout his childhood, like he’d done under Marcus.

He never forgot a face. And like the scientists from the Eugenics era and Marcus himself, his new abusers would pay.

_Eventually._

 

For the time being however, he felt as helpless as he did as a child.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comm-pics are the subspace equivalent of our world’s video-calls.  
> I’m aware that the article on memory-apha claims the term refers to the machine we see in TWOK, but I believe the term actually refers to the call itself, and not just the device used to make it.  
> At any rate, with the technological advancements brought about by the Narada scans done by the Kelvin (and which have influenced immensely Starfleet technology, hence the reboot Enterprise being more advanced and far larger than the TOS one etc.), one could imagine that comm-pics too, have come a long way since the other timeline, and might be now more accessible via smaller PADDs etc.  
> It’s the premise I use in my fics for all these convenient PADD video calls etc.
> 
>  
> 
> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥


	7. Savagery Unleashed And Broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me."_
> 
> Moby Dick
> 
> * * *
> 
>  **Warning:** Mentions of rape and graphic depictions of violence.

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Afternoon

* * *

 

_Bless Spock's stick-in-the-mud nature and the fact he would actually wear his full formal ground uniform for a hospital visit!_

It wasn’t a captain’s uniform, of course --some details like the insignia on the chest were different-- but it was close enough that without too much scrutiny it should allow him entry to the main area of HQ. Especially considering that quite recently Jim had been demoted and then reinstated, so the guards would likely overlook it more easily if they saw him sporting a commander’s insignia so soon after it all.

The security at the door knew him and would let him into the main building on sight, anyway.

Getting to the trial --no doubt being held inside a high-security restricted area-- would be a whole other matter, but considering the plan he’d set in motion, that would comparatively be a smaller obstacle to overcome than the rest of what was to come.

After they’d swapped clothes in the bathroom downstairs, a still clearly worried Spock had reluctantly given Jim his communicator and other necessities, and the captain had exited the hospital as discreetly and as quickly as his current condition allowed him to.

Which, truth to be said, had been the hardest part so far. He'd put up a really good façade as long as Spock could see him --lest the Vulcan might stop him from leaving--, but with how exhausted and weakened Jim was,even just staying conscious was a battle. It was only his stoic determination and the experience born from years of youthful delinquency that allowed him to conceal his condition long enough to get out of the lobby and then stagger his way to the street, out of breath after a mere few meters.

  
Not wanting to attract more attention than necessary --especially if he tried to use a public transporter to beam directly to HQ without having any means of ID on him since he couldn’t get his own personal effects just yet-- Kirk chose a slower method, the hovercar cab service that was available in some parts of the city. It was less direct but should still take him to HQ in time. Hopefully. It had to. There was no way he was going to let this farce go through.

Leaning the back of his head against the hovercar seat, Jim fought to keep his eyes open. Walking out of the hospital and getting to the cab had taken a heavy toll on his worn-out body. His stamina was shot to hell. He loosened the collar of his uniform and struggled to breathe. His head was swimming and he felt feverish. The morbid thought occurred to him that after everything he survived, dying in a cab on his way to HQ would be terribly anti-climatic. Maybe Spock had been right. Why didn’t he ever listen? Maybe going outside in his state was a stupid idea.

But if he didn’t, the Starfleet he cared about would be doomed, forever tainted by murder and corruption. And what he had to do, he couldn’t ask of anyone else. So he dug his fingernails into his palms and tried everything he could to focus and not lose consciousness.

Against the young captain’s best efforts, however, his breathing was increasingly labored and soon his head lolled to the side as everything went dark.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 **Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Several hours earlier

* * *

 

Time never felt like a constant.

It had seemed to pass infinitely slowly while he was locked in his cell or being experimented on --or even worse, when the guards found themselves idle and no one else was around to see what they were doing to him.

And yet, now that Khan was counting the seconds to the right moment, time seemed to be passing at a dizzying speed.

The tall brute who had assaulted him earlier that day in his cell, turned out to have been sent to dress the prisoner for the trial, a task that was hurriedly accomplished shortly after the assault.

Khan now wore a simple pair of non-descript off-white pants and a similar shirt, which could pass for hospital clothes as well as prison ones. The same guard and another one who came to help --but who had been conveniently absent earlier when it would have mattered-- had sat the prisoner down on a basic wheelchair and wheeled him out into a hovercraft that would take him to the trial. A heavily armed escort watched over the loading and departure, but once it was done, only the augment and a handful of people in the vehicle remained.

Khan’s heart hammered in his chest, his blood practically singing in anticipation of the moment to strike.

The augment’s head lolled against the back of the wheelchair with the movements of the vehicle, with the same apparent non-responsiveness he’d been affecting for the past days, his half-lidded gaze taking in what he could see of the scenery speeding by, through the small opening between the locked area where he was being kept with the guards, and the area he couldn't see well, where the driver and one of the lab researchers were sitting.

   
 _It wasn’t time yet._

  
In the enclosed and locked rear of the vehicle, he had no way to free himself; but soon enough, they would reach Starfleet Headquarters. HQ was too large and too open to be as heavily guarded. It was compartmentalized, with some areas of it being far more secure than others. That meant that at some point after the exit from the vehicle, and before they made their way into the more secure areas, he would have the optimal moment to implement his plan.

It was always possible that a heavy military escort would be waiting outside HQ for their arrival, but he calculated that the likelihood of that was low, considering how much they had to hide. The last thing Starfleet Command wanted was to attract attention to this ‘trial’. They might have risked it if they thought him an active threat, but considering what they seemed to believe his current state was, it was highly unlikely. They hadn’t even bothered to cuff him to the chair! A surge of sudden hope burned through his body, making him almost giddy. In his current condition, it made him a bit light-headed. He forced himself to remain unmoving and keep his breathing even, almost as if he was sleeping. _Only a little longer..._

The first part of the escape would be the hardest. He was relatively confident that provided he avoided enough security cameras, once outside and away from HQ he would be able to steal clothes and blend in with the population long enough to disappear in the city. The uncertain part would be to strike at just the right moment to be able to fight the least amount of guards possible. With how drained he was, if he had to overcome too many adversaries, or if they managed to land a good shot or enough stuns, he would go down for sure and everything would be over.

The pain from his injuries wasn’t helping either. Several of his bones were still healing, enclosed in light casts, and a number of areas of his body were heavily bandaged and ached dully and incessantly. A wound on his lower spine bothered him particularly; he could feel it bleeding sluggishly still, additional little spikes of pain triggered by the jostling of the hovercar. It reminded him of shrapnel wounds back from the war, the way they hurt on and on, driving you mad as you were forced to keep moving and fighting with it in your body. He’d received so many injuries in his life and fought that way so many times, it should have been second nature by now. But he had his family then. They fought side by side and he knew someone would have his back if he did ever fall. Now, he was completely alone, and failing would mean their doom, so that wasn’t an option.

Once again, he mentally catalogued his injuries, trying to ascertain which muscles were most functional and just how bad it might be. It was hard to be completely certain, with how many experiments he’d undergone, and with the fact that he had to remain unmoving for days to preserve his cover, and as such was unable to test out his limitations in a concrete manner.

For the time being, he tried to conserve energy for the fighting he’d have to do later.

 

 

\---

 

“I don’t know, man… it seems… _kinda_ wrong, y’know?”

The younger guard’s words belied the twisted lust on his face, as if he was saying them mostly out of convention, empty words he didn’t actually mean, spoken just to test the waters, to see the older guard’s reaction before risking to say more.

The relative low lighting of the corridor in the back-entrance adjacent to Starfleet HQ’s secondary parking area gave the conversation an additional air of conspiratorial sordidness.

Internally, Khan bristled with disgust at their conversation. Externally, he was still slumped on the wheelchair as if he was nothing but dead weight.

Few things repulsed him more than the level of inhumanity and hypocrisy in people like the two guards that were picked to escort him from the Section 31 facility to the trial. Always quick to resort to self-righteous accusations claiming he was a monster, even though they were perfectly willing to commit horrific acts he would never have debased himself or another living being with.

Now that they were out of hearing range of any other officers, they had started casually discussing how acceptable it might be to further take advantage of him prior to his execution.

   
A part of Khan wondered if the two had volunteered for the escort for that, or if he just had rotten luck, but considering both his bleak outlook of Starfleet in general --as a result of his time under Marcus and Section 31-- and the general downwards spiral his life had incessantly taken, it hardly made much of a difference.

As that thought crossed his mind, it was interrupted --or rather, confirmed-- by an outburst from the older guard.

“Ha! You don’t have to feel bad. He’s a fucking monster. Not a person.”

The guard who spoke then was the same one who had assaulted Khan earlier that day --and a number of times before that, while the augment had been unable to do anything to stop it without revealing that his unresponsive state was just a ruse.

Further emboldened by the fact that no one else had bothered to check on the prisoner before taking him to the trial --and it was unsure whether Section 31 would have cared much even if they had noticed the assault-- the man was now preening and acting as if he was taking upon himself to pimp out the semi-conscious prisoner.

   
The two guards flanked the wheelchair while waiting by the turbolift doors. Some of the other officials hadn’t arrived yet, security was still getting organized, and so, that area was as good of a place as any other to wait some minutes away.

No one was in any hurry to attract attention to such a high profile prisoner, hence the discreet entrance and minimal security outside.

Apparently, that low-key arrival wasn’t enough to quell the nerves of the younger guard, at least when it came to their own shady activities not being noticed by the rest. He harped on, “But someone might still find out...”

“No one cares. He’s nothing more than a vegetable and a lab rat about to be put down. Who cares if you shoot a load in his mouth before he goes? And let me tell ya, his mouth is _reaaally_ sweet.” The older guard let out a low whistle after he said it, and --as if to illustrate his point-- ran a thumb over the augment’s lips, parting them and, finding no resistance, hovered at the entry for a moment before sliding the thick digit between the teeth, coaxing the mouth open easily as he tilted the augment’s head farther back against the back of the wheelchair.

Basking in the weird sort of fascinated admiration coming off the other guard, the older man continued his boasting. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. I tapped that tight ass earlier and he’s still dripping from my load. I’m telling ya, no one will check or care. He’ll be dead soon enough anyway. From the talk I heard he won’t live past today.”

The younger guard took in the sight more closely. The way the prisoner’s pale eyes remained open but vacant was almost eerie; a dead stare unfocused and aimed at nothing in particular. It was creepy but the augment was so beautiful it was easy to overlook that aspect, even with the bruises and other injuries. The guard licked his lips, not even bothering to conceal his desire. The other one encouraged him further.

“Look at this. He’s like a fuck doll.” He gripped Khan’s silky hair with his other hand and added his index and middle finger to the thumb already in the prisoner’s mouth, pressing down on the tongue and making a suggestive back-and-forth motion with his fingers towards the augment’s throat, as if to further demonstrate how pliant and unresisting he was. If Khan gagged, he didn’t let any sign of it show. The guard marveled at how perfect it felt. It was easy to lose himself in that unresisting warm wetness, and the idea of what else he could do with it. “Don’t worry about a thing. Hell, you might not even have to wait until after the trial, I bet there’s time for a quickie before it starts and no one will even know.”

“Shit, you think? I might like that, yeah… Maybe in the turbolift if we have time to block it between floors and no one notices it’s taking longer to get there...”

The younger guard shot a nervous glance in the direction of the soldier with a heavy phaser rifle who was still standing at the other end of the corridor, by the entrance. He was normal Starfleet, not Section 31, and neither of the two knew him personally. There were all sorts of people everywhere, but in general Section 31 staff was more prone to overlook transgressions than standard Starfleet --even more so against prisoners, since Section 31 already normally operated under the radar and quite often outside of the scope of the Federation’s laws and regulations.

   
But the soldier wasn’t looking at them. He was sticking his head out the door, apparently busy replying to something someone further outside in the parking area was saying. The two guards watched him carefully, wondering if he’d get in the way by riding the turbolift with them and the prisoner or not.

Out of the corner of his eye, Khan too was watching. He kept his gaze unfocused, but he was keenly aware of everything around him. Even if he hadn’t been, with how much warfare experience he had, the colors and movements were all that was needed for him to notice the exact instant the soldier with the phaser rifle stepped outside and walked away from the entrance, his voice diminishing as he was called away by someone farther in the parking area.

The motion-sensor door swished shut, unlocked still, but now blocking the sound of the distant talk outside, and the prisoner and the two Section 31 men were suddenly alone in the corridor.

The older guard’s attention was focused on the door too, and as soon as he saw the soldier step out, he snickered and shot a grin at the younger one. “Looks like you won’t have to wait to fuck his mouth after a-”

   
He never got to finish his sentence, the words turning instead into an incoherent scream.

  
The younger guard froze, not understanding what was happening, at first. One instant, everything had been quiet and utterly ordinary, and now suddenly his colleague was falling back, a spray of blood shooting from his mangled hand that he was desperately attempting to clutch with the other one, either to stem the blood flow or in an attempt to make sense of where his fingers had disappeared to.

The screaming was interrupted almost as fast as it had started. The prisoner, the man they had all believed to be deeply catatonic, had lunged out of the wheelchair, sending it flying back. Like a tiger bounding for its prey, he was now pinning the much taller guard against the wall, squeezing his windpipe and preventing him from screaming for help.

   
Khan spat out the man’s severed fingers and snarled at him, teeth bared, blood running down his chin, staining his face and shirt a dark crimson.

Mere inches from the guard’s face, he roared, “You wanted a monster? ** _I’ll give you a monster!!_** ”

The guard’s mangled hand flayed about uselessly in a panic, while his other hand grabbed for the augment’s arm, squeezing as hard as possible and shattering through the cast still protecting one of Khan’s not-yet-healed bones. Aside from the height difference, the guard was also far stronger than Khan currently was. Even then, he was no match for the augment’s determination and instincts.

If Khan registered the pain in his arm, he didn’t let show any sign of it. Slamming a foot against the wall for balance, the augment shoved the fingers of both his hands into the guard’s mouth, gripping his top and lower jaw and yanking them apart in opposite directions. After a moment, a horrifying series of sounds occurred; first was the guard’s jawbone giving way, followed by the sickening sound of living flesh tearing.

The younger guard stared at the two in shock and let out a shrill cry of terror. He pressed himself against the adjacent wall, desperately slamming his fingers on the control panel for the turbolift in an attempt to escape, but it was apparently held up on a higher floor and not coming down. Frozen with fear, he forgot his training and could only stare in horror at the carnage taking place in front of him, too afraid to fight or even try to step around the two men and run for the exit. Too afraid to even call for help. He’d never been one of the field operatives, and mere prison-guard grunts did not get the same amount of training as an actual agent. He’d had to subdue prisoners before, but he’d never encountered such a sudden escalation or something so shocking.

Ironically, if he’d conquered his fear he could have dropped the augment easily enough, either with his holstered phaser or the stun baton that still hung uselessly from his belt. With how injured Khan was, all it would take was one stun. And it was unlikely that the augment could have fought both guards at once if they had attacked him in tandem.

In a desperate panic, the older guard pummeled the augment with his arms and legs, desperately trying to punch and kick him away or stop him from injuring him any further, but rather than fall, Khan wrapped his legs around the man’s waist and clung onto him, his hold like a vice. The position, slipping against the wall and down onto the ground, made the guard’s balance precarious and made it extra-hard to dislodge the augment. When the guard finally managed to shove him aside after a long struggle, they fell together, rolling on the ground briefly before Khan managed with some difficulty to straddle the guard again and finished what he’d set out to do.

Soon the guard’s movements grew completely erratic and less effective, the muffled screams turning into terrifying bloody gurgles as the tearing gap widened, and then finally the dying man lay twitching on the ground, his jaw ripped apart all the way down to the middle of his neck, the lower part of it hanging off like some sort of hideous red maw. It was slower than crushing someone's head, but it required less strength, and was just as brutal.

   
Khan was running on nothing but adrenaline by now. If not for the fight-or-flight effect fueling his system, the augment might not have been able to even rise from the ground.

As it was, he disentangled himself from the corpse with difficulty and rose in a jerky and awkward manner, which only made his movements seem inhuman and even more horrifying, especially now that much of his face, arms, and chest were drenched in blood. This was partly due to the dead guard and partly from several of his own wounds reopening and bleeding through the prison clothes. His arms hurt so badly that he couldn’t command his fists to close just yet, although he knew that was only a momentary effect. He had more pressing concerns: he was losing blood at too fast a rate to last long. He turned away from the remaining guard --who seemed too frozen in fear to be much of a threat-- and looked at the door, still free of security for the time being.

The younger guard seemed to choose this moment to snap out of his entranced terror. Maybe some sense of duty finally struck, or perhaps he simply thought the augment would inevitably go after him now that the older guard was down. Or maybe he was crazy enough to see the difficulties the augment was having, and assume those signs meant he stood a chance against Khan on his own, injured as the augment was. Whichever the reason, the decision doomed him.

“S- Stop. Put your hands behind your head and get on your kn- knees!!”

He’d spoken too soon, right as he reached for the phaser on his belt, and failed to grasp it with his hands trembling so hard. Too late and in a flash of panic, he realized he ought to have had the weapon out and in hand before calling out that order.

The augment turned back at him, almost eerily slow, his blood-splattered face deathly pale, giving him even more of a terrifying allure. At this moment, Khan looked part-corpse and part-Angel of Death, and his voice came out like a sepulchral rasp.

   
“You want me on my knees?”

  
Khan took a step forward. The guard took one backwards, still trying to pull the phaser out of its holster, sweaty hands fumbling too much to act as quickly or as accurately as they should, and then finally managing to get the weapon out. But in his hurry to put more space between the prisoner and himself, he tripped, stumbled backwards and nearly fell, dropping the phaser, which skittered away on the tiled floor with a noise that made whatever bravery was left in the guard’s body ebb away at ludicrous speed.

Half-fueled by panic and half by some remaining instinct, the guard managed to whip out his stun baton and lunge forward, extending it and bringing it down in an arc, aiming for the augment’s shoulder, at maximum setting.

It never hit. Khan intercepted the man’s arm, grabbing him by his wrist in a steel grip. He watched the blue arc of electricity crackle uselessly along the length of the baton held up in the air above them, before growling, “I have lived on my knees for far too long!”

With a sudden yank on his arm, he threw the guard off balance and sent him crashing to the ground.

The last thing the man saw was Khan’s foot coming down towards his neck. He stomped it broken, crushing the man’s windpipe and killing him on the spot.

 

The door was still unimpeded and sunlight beamed in through it, the flare of light like a beacon of freedom beckoning him, but it would not remain so for much longer. There was no way the commotion had gone unheard and reinforcements were certainly on their way. Khan would have to abandon the rest of the plan and prioritize getting away from the building as fast as possible, drenched in blood or not. There was no time to change into the guards’ clothes as he’d hoped to. He could not linger an instant longer.

He lunged, grabbed the fallen phaser, and took off running for the exit. As he reached the end of the corridor, the motion-sensor opened the door for him, with no guards visible anywhere in the immediate vicinity.

He was bathed by the sunlight coming in from outside.

   
A rush of elation shot through him at the first feeling of freedom he had felt since his ill-fated attempt to smuggle his crew out of Marcus’s grip in the cryotubes. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, he felt like it was going to be okay.

His head swimming from both blood loss and giddiness, Khan stepped out towards the sunlit parking area…

   
...and promptly collapsed to the ground heavily, a hoarse scream escaping his lips, his body racked by powerful convulsions.

  
The suddenness of it, as well as the complete loss of mobility or any control over himself were terrifying, far more than the excruciating pain of it. Even more so because there was no indication whatsoever of what had happened or how.

No indication…at least, until a disapproving voice approached his prone form. “Well, well, well… I knew you were going to try something, but I didn’t expect you could still be this fast and effective, even in your state.”

A middle-aged man in a white medical uniform walked up to the augment, from a nearby corner in the parking area, and stepped around his convulsing body, tut-tutting at him as one might at a disobedient pet, before kicking the fallen phaser away from the prisoner’s reach. The only protest the augment could offer came out as choking sounds.

   
“This is upsetting… I had been sure that whatever you tried, they would have disabled you long before you could harm them.” The man surveyed the blood-splattered corridor with a kind of displeasure that bordered on clinical detachment, as one might look at a petri dish with a misbehaving bacterial growth rather than a gruesome battle scene. His eyes lingered a tad longer on the guard with his jaw torn open, dead in a pool of his own blood.

“Your limits are clearly above what we had thought they were. Had I realized that before, I would have ensured we studied you for a while longer rather than let the politicians have their sacrificial lamb so soon. What a pity that all good things come to an end so quickly...”

  
Paralyzed but conscious throughout the still-ongoing seizure, Khan twitched on the ground, unable to do anything beyond recognizing the voice of Dr. Adams, one of the head scientists from Section 31 who had been among those cutting him open day after day.

The doctor lifted a foot and prodded at the augment’s lower back, where blood was seeping through the bandage and onto the prisoner’s clothes. The feeling akin to shrapnel moving inside a wound was far stronger now as the man pressed down on his spine; it was a distinct kind of pain, discernible as different and foreign even among the cacophony of agony currently surging through Khan’s body. The augment’s mind was too jumbled at the moment to process exactly what that meant, but he knew it was bad.

Poking at the metal piece embedded inside the wound, the doctor asked, with a tinge of cruelty in his voice that belied his profession’s medical origins, “You like it? We installed it during one of the times you were unconscious. It’s a concealed Orion neurolytic restraint, especially modified for use on you. One of the perks of working for Section 31... This device is entirely illegal as per Federation laws, but then, according to the same laws so is your existence itself. So I guess you don't get to nitpick.”

No articulate response was forthcoming, of course. The augment had many choice words for the scientist, but his body was taut like a rope about to snap, shaken by brutal spasms that tore only agonized sounds from his throat. It was almost like being burned alive, and yet being unable to move or do anything to stop it. Sweat beaded his forehead.

The doctor crouched down to look more closely at Khan’s face . It was almost unrecognizable, the elegant features twisted in pain. A line of saliva stretched between the augment’s clenched teeth and the ground, twitching wildly to the rhythm of his spasms. He stared angrily ahead, eyes unfocused, trying to weather out the storm and force his body back under control, but to no avail. Strands of hair that had fallen over his eyes clung to the sweat rolling down his skin. There was blood on his lips, some from the fight earlier and some from where he accidentally bit himself during the seizure.

   
Black spots were floating in Khan’s vision, and yet somehow oblivion wouldn’t come.

Idly, the doctor tapped his index finger along the edge of a device in his hand, the controller for the small box attached to the augment’s spine.

“See this? I’ve had it on me all day, just waiting for when I might need to use it.”

The scientist’s thumb was still firmly lodged on the central button, holding it in place and drawing out the seizure further and further, with no apparent end in sight.

“Maybe the grunts fell for your little act at playing possum, but we’re not all as stupid as you’d hoped for. We’ve been monitoring your brain patterns and I didn’t believe for one second that you were truly harmless. A thing like you is a living weapon. Even truly disabled you would never be completely harmless. Our only error was to think two guards were enough to leave you alone for five minutes. Let’s face it, you never had a chance to walk out out of here. But not to worry... You’ll pay for this mistake, after all.”

Finally, the doctor let go of the button and the searing agony and paralysis stopped, replaced by countless aches left in their wake, along with a sluggish lethargy.

“Now let’s get going, we have a trial to attend and we still have to add another two charges of murder to the headcount we’ll condemn you for...”

   
Khan gasped for breath, shaking on the ground, his whole body involuntarily sagging from exhaustion and threatening to shut down at any moment.

 

His mind was racing in desperate search of a contingency plan and finding nothing whatsoever.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think this cliffhanger is bad... I was originally going to end this chapter the moment Khan starts to set foot outside, finishing with the line _"...and the most horrible and unexpected thing happened."_ And leaving it off there, with nothing about the scientist or what happened to Khan until the next chapter. XD 
> 
> But I felt it would have been anti-climatic to have that part at the beginning of the next chapter, so the cliffhanger is way less bad. 
> 
> Although we still don't know what is going to happen to Khan, or if Jim will even manage to make it to HQ, much less sneak into it in the terrible condition he's in... :3
> 
> Btw, "Dr. Adams" is [Tristan Adams](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Tristan_Adams) from TOS. Well, the version of him in the new timeline, that is, so he may be the same or even sicker... ;)  
> As a general rule, if a character showing up in one of my fics has a name, there's 95% chance they're from canon. *has an addiction for shoving all the TOS characters possible in fics* XD;
> 
>  
> 
> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥


	8. Walls in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“Me miserable! Which way shall I fly_   
>  _Infinite wrath and infinite despair?_   
>  _Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;_   
>  _And in the lowest deep a lower deep,_   
>  _Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,_   
>  _To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”_
> 
> Milton, Paradise Lost
> 
> * * *
> 
> I have no excuse, so sorry this update took two months. D:  
> I thought I'd have time to update way sooner. (Onto good news though, the next chapter is almost ready!)

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72  
** (March 13th 2259)

Trial

* * *

 

 

 

It was not in Commodore José Mendez’s nature to be cruel.

 

He’d joined Section 31 not out of a desire to do things with less accountability or to circumvent the legal restraints that most Starfleet officers were bound by, but simply because he believed that sometimes the rules got in the way of true justice, or of whatever needed to be done for the greater good. He wasn’t alone in thinking that way, even if there was also quite a number of people in Section 31 with far less elevated ideals and intentions.

 

José’s fury towards Khan was born of pain, anger, and a desire for revenge of enough magnitude to make even an otherwise just man want to see blood spilled to repay the loss of Pike.

 

Admiral Pike was a Federation hero. His death, and that of the other admirals who perished in the Daystrom conference room, were a fresh wound in the consciousness of many in Starfleet, even those who hadn’t been quite as close to him.

 

Even without considering the hatred Section 31 felt towards Khan for the the destruction of their secret weapons facility in London and even more so for the loss of their leader --as well as various other setbacks such as the loss of the USS Vengeance-- there were many in Starfleet as a whole, who would have already wished for retribution on the basis of that attack alone.

 

It wasn’t any surprise then that this high-security room at Starfleet Headquarters, in which the trial was going to be held, was brimming with hatred and a desire for swift and brutal retribution.

 

There was a large amount of top Starfleet brass and Section 31 personnel in attendance, and as such, despite the secrecy around it all, the trial was being held in one of the larger rooms set up specifically for court-martials.

 

José stood against the railing in the lower row of the tiered gallery along the length of the wall. Most of the officers who’d been allowed to watch the trial were seated there, opposite the elevated area across the room from where the admirals ruling the court were settling down. This area was a higher gallery, single-file instead of set-up in rows, and with more comfortable seats and a long table before them.

 

At the center of the room, below both areas and oriented sideways so as to offer ideal visibility to both groups, was a smaller enclosed dais for the accused, reminiscent of a mix of defendant’s table and the witness stands from Earth’s old times’ courtrooms, perhaps set-up that way for tradition’s sake. There was no seat in it, however, only a waist-high metal rail surrounding it on all sides, replacing the artificial-wood rail that would normally have been there. Maybe they didn’t want to risk leaving anything that might be used as a weapon. The metal was bolted to the ground. It was almost surprising it wasn’t a full-sized cage.

 

The fury and hatred shared by all the officers present seemed to reach a paroxysm when the prisoner was brought in.

 

And yet, for all that José wanted to see the augment brought down and punished for his crimes, he had a bad feeling when he saw a detachment of soldiers bring him into the room, two of them half-carrying half-dragging the man between them. He was bloodied and barely conscious.

 

Like many other Starfleet officers, José had seen pics and footage of Khan before, anywhere from the surprisingly fragile-looking photo of him in the official file for John Harrison --which José later would come to realize, was taken shortly after Marcus first found Khan and his crew, captured him and pressed him into service-- to the much more dangerous way he looked in the excerpts of security footage in San Francisco and later in his cell at the Section 31 facility. Seeing him fighting on video had reinforced José’s assumptions about Khan, but moments when he looked vulnerable were always harder to process.

  
And like some of the higher-ranking Section 31 members, he’d also seen the rest of the top-secret file --classified even to most of Section 31 personnel-- revealing the discovery of the SS Botany Bay and identifying the man as the same Khan Noonien Singh from the Eugenics Wars nearly three hundred years ago. (The name was taboo, and all the files about the trial would be marked as pertaining to the court-martial of Starfleet officer “John Harrison,” even though those present blatantly knew how false that was.)

 

But nothing that he read or saw had prepared him for this.

 

Not only because finally seeing the murderer of Pike in person reawakened his anger and desire for revenge, but also because the way Khan looked elicited such a contrary reaction.

 

He was sure the augment would stroll into the room with disdain and condescendingly sneer down at them. A “superior human”, made to be better than them all; most likely considering them all to be nothing but insects that he would squash without a qualm.

 

Everything about him must be cold and calculating, no warmth or vulnerability, just a killing machine.

 

Or so, José had expected.

 

Even covered in blood, the man that was dragged into the room was just so… _human._

 

It was hard to imagine that this man could be the cold-blooded murderer that José had been expecting to see.

 

Even after all his warnings to Jim and his certainty that Khan was a cunning animal, a dangerous creature, José found himself horrified at the sight of the guards manhandling the gaunt prisoner into the small enclosed space at the center of the room, roughly cuffing his wrists to the rail surrounding it. The way the augment tried to look unfazed but stumbled in and strained to stay upright after the guards released his arms, leaning heavily onto the barrier and breathing with difficulty, sent a cold shiver up the commodore’s spine.

 

_What are we doing here? How can this be justice?!_

 

José swept the gallery with a quick glance, searching the others assembled for a similar reaction, wondering if he was alone in this contradictory yearning for revenge hindered by sudden scruples.

 

But then Khan seemed to find his bearings, and the entire room’s attention was immediately focused on him. The augment turned towards the assembled admirals. Green-blue eyes that until a moment ago were disoriented as he was dragged in, suddenly took on a hardness and a depth of hatred that José had never seen in anyone, nor had even thought possible.

 

The augment positively snarled at them, “Is this the lot who would _dare_ judge me? Your starfleet calls me a monster, but you are the ones who are no better than the tyrants of the past that you so readily lump me with!”

 

Despite his current state, Khan’s outraged voice still held its power and echoed across the room, his disgust for all present made obvious in everything about him.

 

José’s gaze grew cold and hard. Where he would have normally seen a prisoner barely standing, he now saw again the rabid murderer he’d warned Jim against. The memory of the shame he’d felt when Jim had witnessed the behavior of the guards in the video-feed was now forgotten.

 

Khan’s hands were still gripping the barrier tightly in order to keep standing, but José no longer saw it like that, an injured prisoner struggling to stay upright. Instead, he saw the fresh blood just summarily wiped, on the augment’s fingers and arms, and realized Khan must have killed again at some point just before the trial. He seemed to be also openly bleeding from a number of wounds that his formerly-white --and now dirty and blood-stained-- prisoner garb did nothing to conceal, but it was hard to imagine that all of the blood on him could be from that only.

 

_You have the nerve to accuse us, to insult us, when you are still dripping with the blood of your latest victims._

 

Fury rose in the commodore’s gut, made worse by the fact that up until Khan’s outburst, José had almost felt something akin to pity for the augment. He clenched his teeth and cursed internally for having almost fallen for his act and played right into what the augment certainly must have been hoping for. It had to be. He was angry at himself for his foolishness, but so much more so at the augment and his wiles.

 

Around him, the gallery seemed to be afire with anger too; officers of all ranks and all backgrounds united in this collective fury barely restrained by the propriety that a tribunal demanded, but yearning to be unleashed on the murderer who dared to taint the name of their fleet after all he’d done to it.

 

_You killed Pike. You killed so many more. And you dare stand here and act like you’re not a monster._

 

 

_You will burn, you bastard._

 

_You will never kill again._

 

_We will **bury** you._

 

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

There was only so much that a human being could take.

 

And even an augmented human was, after all, still only human.

 

Khan had been running on fumes for so long that he felt like a ragged bow with a frayed string, pulled taut too many times, a little closer to snapping with each new time he was made to fire. And he wasn’t sure how much longer he had before he was too far gone to function effectively.

 

The broken bones in his body, the aches and internal bleeding, those he continued to refuse to acknowledge, much like the visible bleeding on the outside, the foreign metal embedded in his spine, the way his head still felt fuzzy from that induced seizure…

 

Even with all that, none of it would have been enough to weaken his willpower.

 

Nothing could possibly make him give up on fighting for his people.

 

But he wasn’t going to fool himself about still being able to make a difference once his thought process or even his ability to speak unraveled at last. He was just too injured and had lost far too much blood to last indefinitely.

 

Now that escape was impossible as a result of Dr. Adam’s device, his only chance was talking his way out into some alternative to the death penalty, and his prospects were looking rather dim.  
What he found the very worst obstacle wasn’t even the way his body was rapidly falling apart. It was by far the wall he seemed to be once more cornered at the foot of, a barrier that he couldn’t overcome, even if he’d had all the time in the world. And he doubted he had more than a few hours left before his body shut down from too much damage.

 

The same old wall that always appeared in his path, blocking the way, destroying everything he’d worked for his whole life.

 

It wasn’t a surprise.

 

It had always been all about walls, all through his life.

 

As a small child, he’d already been surrounded by them.

 

Tall fences with barbed wire and later thick concrete walls, which people at the lab told him were there to protect them from the angry protesters outside, who spent day and night yelling through the walls that they were an abomination that didn’t deserve to live. Walls to “protect” them, until they were old enough to be able to fight, and, of course, to be sold off to the highest bidding countries all over the world. They were an expensive commodity.

 

Walls that had been there not to truly protect, but to hold precious merchandise in. Walls that he grew up staring at and yearning to climb over and never return. But not alone, there would be no point if he was alone in the world.

 

Later, there had been other walls, more subtle, in the shape of sale contracts, mercenary missions and obligations, threats as thick as the concrete of his early childhood had been. Walling him in the war, always reminding him that if he so much as dared to think of rebelling, failing a mission, escaping, or any form thereof, those he cared for would pay the price. A sword of Damocles hanging over their heads at all times, never all together, and always unable to attempt escape separately.

 

But he’d finally broken through, leading his people to freedom, away from those who thought they were property to sell and use at will.

 

And there were new walls, once he was in power, this time walls truly in place to protect them and the people who sided with them, from invasion. Metaphorical ones in the form of countless treaties, and real ones along some areas of their borders, or along various fortresses.

 

Fours years of mad hope and impossible dreams.

 

And of walls that had been breached over and over --be they made of paper and ink or bricks and mortar-- and which they patched up endlessly, desperately, rather than go to war. Blindly trying to cling onto the possibility of peace. But it was all doomed from the start, and in the end, the few of them that were left had to hide between brand new metal walls to escape to space instead --the _Botany Bay_.

 

Khan sighed, despair churning inside him. Because all along, the greatest wall there ever had been was not made of stone or concrete.

 

It was the wall within people’s minds. The wall that humanity had decided existed between them and augments. Branding Khan and his people as inhuman, unworthy of saving, mere cattle to use and dispose of at best, or vermin too dangerous to be left alive at worst.

 

And that was a wall he’d never succeeded at breaching completely. There were many people who had sided with them, but the rest of the planet -- some out of simple prejudice and racism, others fueled by the fear of the augment rulers who really could be called tyrants-- was against them.  
And so it only lasted a brief few years before that dream shattered to pieces-- so he’d given up altogether on Earth, thinking that only by fleeing into space would they finally be free. That they would find a future where the world was different, where humans would accept them as part of the same species. Or that they might find a new planet where the differences wouldn’t matter, and where they might finally be welcome without anyone feeling the need to invade the place to eradicate them.

 

But the future had been the same as the past. Khan’s bright hopes and optimistic assumptions were shattered the day Admiral Marcus had his men drag him out of his cryotube and immediately put him in a cage. The future had so many aliens that were stronger and smarter than humans and yet, humanity still refused to accept them, as if the mere genetic difference between them was enough to condemn them forever.

 

He supposed it was his fault, after all. With all that he’d gone through during his childhood and the wars, he thought he must truly be a fool to still have harbored any hopes that it might one day be any different. That mankind could evolve beyond such petty things and accept them.

 

He was anything but a blind optimist, and yet, even with his instinctive wariness and natural distrust, he’d still been surprised by how little improvement there had been in human evolution. All his dreams and hopes for the future were just that, foolish daydreams. He discovered a world full of technical advancements, but in which he felt that man himself had changed so little.

 

_It was all for nothing. All I ever gave them was false hope._

 

If he’d known back then, he’d have done everything differently. They’d have stayed on Earth and fought to the death, to the very end together. It would have been a better end than this. At least dying in battle, they’d all have been sure none of his people would end up as lab rats again.

 

Now he found himself a caged animal once more, begging a gaggle of self-important fools, desperate for any chance to save his people no matter the cost.

 

But it was like talking to a wall, all over again. No matter what he did or said, in their eyes he wasn’t human, none of his people were; they were either potentially useful lab subjects or a dangerous species to be eradicated. And so their judges felt no guilt.

 

From the expressions around him, not all were as bloodthirsty as some but they all seemed to be in agreement that augments were a menace to be disposed of, in whatever way they felt best benefited the Federation.

 

Some looked down on his staggering figure as some sort of embarrassment to their tribunal, like a nefarious parasite, bleeding on the floor of their courtroom and making a mockery of their institution by forcing them to hold this hearing for the sake of propriety. It was clear they would have much preferred to simply put him down like a rabid animal.

  
He saw it clearly in their eyes, that so many of them would have gladly had him executed without bothering with the trial at all if they could. Those who would normally have seen the horror of their actions were too blinded by anger and desire for retribution to see what they were doing.

 

_Like a lynch mob thirsty for blood. No matter what I say falls on deaf ears. It’s the end of the war all over again._

 

_No. The war never ended. Our cryostasis just postponed the inevitable._

 

He clenched his fists against the banister, hands shaking in the cuffs, willing his knees to keep holding him upright.

 

He was surrounded by people who self-righteously believed themselves grand paragons of morality and science and exploration, who went wandering among the stars as if the whole universe was their playground, as if they had the right to barge their way into anyone’s territory and force them into a relationship with their Federation, and who were perfectly willing to destroy what they viewed as an entire species on the simple basis that they might be a danger. _‘Too dangerous to be left alive’... ‘too much of a potential threat’..._ Not even at the heart of the war, when other augment rulers had been slaughtering people in droves, had Khan ever considered that those reasons might justify such actions. Never. He’d always been adamantly against any form of massacre.

 

And yet, these so-called civilized men, these enlightened people, so quick to pass judgement on him based on assumptions and wild fears, were ready to execute him and the entirety of his people. Actual genocide, of all that was left of them.

 

He craned his neck painfully, gazing at the admirals one by one, with such hatred that some looked fearful even though he was chained to the rail. Yes, he would kill them all if he could. He’d tried to, with the ship. But it might not have been so if things had gone differently. Now the well was poisoned, on both sides.

 

In his eyes, most of the people in this court were no better than buffoons. He was better, he should never have had to justify his actions in defense of his people, least of all to ones such as the pompous fools in this room.

 

But it was the only way he might have any hope of success, and so he would try and try, desperately so, with every ounce of strength and every breath of air he had left, no matter how much his body may hurt or how hard it was to stay conscious, no matter that it felt like his most futile effort to date.

 

The trial might be just a rigged hearing for the appearances of due-process, but it was still running its course as if it was real, and so they were all going through the motions.

 

And so Khan had explained his position over and over, how his actions, wrong as they may have been, were done out of a lack of any other recourse, and how, even if he was to be condemned for it, his people were innocent.

 

His message fell on deaf ears over and over, no matter how many times he reworded it, or added any mitigating details.

 

If anything, they seemed more furious as he explained that in a moment of madness on the ruins of the Vengeance, amidst the shattered glass and the blaring alarms, at the lowest point of his despair, he’d considered engaging the ship’s self-destruction sequence, but had balked at the thought of what would happen to the city and all its inhabitants.

 

All of San Francisco and much of the area beyond it would have been razed to the ground in a nuclear catastrophe worthy of the worst of the Eugenics Wars.

 

All that it would have taken was for him to have confirmed the order.

 

Everyone in the room, everyone in the city, was alive only because of his mercy.

 

Because he’d looked through the torn-open viewscreen of the _Vengeance_ and gazed upon the devastation he’d wrought, and snapped out of it. Even consumed by grief and wrath and having nothing left but revenge, he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not when the price would have been the lives of the civilian population of the entire city.

 

And they were going to reward his mercy by executing him and giving the people he held most dear an end worse than death itself.

 

In the eyes of those present in the room, Khan and his people had been condemned as war criminals long ago and Starfleet was merely carrying out a much delayed execution. Just as Admiral Marcus had put it, before he tried to take out the _Enterprise_ and the near 1200 people on board.

It hardly mattered to most that the courts that had convicted them in the 20th century had done so as mass convictions towards an entire race, completely unrelated to individual responsibility. Or that the Federation had technically abolished the death penalty long ago --there were countless jokes about the exceptions that existed to get around that abolition, aside from the most famous one concerning Talos IV. One more exception, especially one backed by precedent of an older condemnation, would hardly make a difference. Khan and his people were not Federation citizens. And because they had been engineered, some in Section 31 might even argue that they should be considered objects rather than sentient beings.

There was no way to describe the amount of loathing and despair Khan was feeling at the moment. The weight of it was crushing him so much more readily than all the physical damage ever could.

 

There was no justice to be had in that court. He knew better than expect it.

 

But if not justice, rather than let them have his family, perhaps he could sell the only thing he had left to offer.

 

It was something he’d already tried in prison, in the first panicked moments after he’d found out that his crew was still alive, still in captivity, still at the mercy of the enemy and whatever cruelty they might decide to unleash on the men and women helplessly asleep inside the seventy-two cryotubes. At that moment, it had been pure panic moving him, as no one present then had any true power to grant him what he was asking for, no matter what he offered.

 

Things were very different here. The men and women in this room were the very top of Starfleet’s ranks, many among the most influential people in the Federation. They had both the power to make such decisions, and no doubt countless uses for him, especially if he were to offer full cooperation. If he could convince them, his people might finally have a chance.

 

With his voice cracking from all the wasted effort talking for so long, so different now from the perfectly cadenced diction he normally favored, he forced out, “Your starfleet...has done everything it pleased with me… It has tortured me, imprisoned me, enslaved me, vivisected me even… You’ve acted as if I was nothing but a piece of property, meat on a slab. The same way your forefathers had done back in the time I come from. Is it any wonder that I fought back? I had no other choice. Against them all or against Marcus and you all, how could I not fight? I have done so, and was going to keep doing so, until my last breath, as long as I had a choice. But it’s different now. You’ve finally won. I won’t fight anymore. You can have what you want. You can do whatever you want to me. I will cooperate with everything. Just please...let them live. I’ll do anything you want, as long as my people are unharmed.”

 

Trepidation roiled inside him as he made his offer, along with a terrified feeling that could only be described as hope against all that he instinctively knew would happen. But, just as he feared, the reaction of the tribunal was at first the same indifference and annoyance they’d given to his defense, and then as he plowed on, their expressions turned to disbelief and churlish amusement.

 

An admiral scoffed at him, “How could we possibly trust you? After all that happened?”

 

“You would...have have my word.” He hated how useless that sounded.

 

“Your word?” The snickers a number of the officers made it clear what they thought of Khan’s honor. “You’ve given your word to the late admiral Marcus too, no doubt. We all know how your honored that promise.”

 

“Things were different then.” It sounded poor even to Khan’s ears, desperate and out of options as he was.

 

He was a man of honor, but he didn’t consider he’d lost any in his lying to Marcus, not when the admiral had behaved with such dishonor that whatever promises Khan had been made to make were torn from him by force and menace. He’d have promised anything to save his crew, and he’d have betrayed anyone if it meant giving them a chance to escape alive. Unfortunately, by now Starfleet was probably quite aware of that.

 

“The way I see it, _Harrison_ ,” the name sounded even more like an insult the way the admiral enunciated it, “you’re not in a position to grant anything at all. We don’t need your cooperation, nor do we need you any longer. We have seventy-two other specimens.”

 

The anger within Khan was only matched by his despair and the terror that this would truly come to pass. 

 

_The worst possible outcome._

 

If he died leaving his people in captivity, there would be no one left to save them from this living nightmare. He had to try anything he could to shield them. He forced himself to stay focused and not give in to the urge to lash out, not even a little; it would be useless and only harm his cause.

 

_We fought for so long to avoid exactly this. We swore we'd never surrender, never be slaves again._

_That we’d die together rather than live on our knees one more day._

 

They had taken to the stars and soared towards an almost certain death --the odds of making it out of the solar system alive with a ship not made for long distance travel had been 10.000 to 1-- rather than risk staying behind to die on Earth. All for that promise they all made.

 

_But that's not a promise I can keep if the cost is your lives._

 

_I'll gladly sell myself if it could save you all, or at least give you a chance._

 

He was completely desperate now, and would have gladly submitted to any torture of their choice if it would convince them of his sincerity. And to make matters worse, his body was running out of energy to keep standing. If he were to lose consciousness before the end, he had no doubt they’d continue with the sentencing nevertheless.

 

Partly as a result of that certainty and partly from giving up on whatever shreds were left of his pride, he let himself slide to the ground. His bloody fingers were still curled around the handrail his wrists were cuffed to, but his face was now at the same height as the rail. 

 

On his knees on the cold hard floor, he craned his head even further to look up at the admirals, hoping the imploring position might help convince them. Once he'd made sure that he had their attention more completely than earlier, he bowed his head to them. He was too drained for a flush to even rise to his cheeks at the additional humiliation, but the slight shaking in his hands wasn't only exhaustion. _I was a prince with power over millions... but none of that matters if I can't even save the very last of my people._ Powerless anger and pride were useless; he would cast anything away if it might help give them a chance.

 

"Keep me as a slave or kill me if you will, but first let my people go. Please... If you spare them, I swear to you, I will belong to the Federation, in whatever way you see fit. This is more explicit than any promise of cooperation I’ve made to Admiral Marcus."

 

Slavery was what Marcus had forced him into, but it had been true in body while not being official, then. He had no pride to protect anymore and cared little if it was made official now.

 

His shallow breaths trembled feverishly against his hands and the rail. He looked up again and scanned their faces for a reaction, any sign that he might have finally mollified them. But he saw more contempt than pity, and if any did feel guilt, the matter was by now too convoluted; those who might were not willing to speak against his more vicious enemies.

 

For a moment he almost allowed himself a shred of hope when he saw a tortured look that Admiral Chandra briefly exchanged with Admiral Barnett, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared and neither of them said anything before one of the older officers --a close friend of the late Admiral Komack, killed in the Daystrom Attack-- took upon himself to respond, with a viciousness that belied how personally he took this matter.

 

"But you already do belong to us... You’re a prisoner about to be sentenced, what could you have to offer more than this? No matter who you talk to, no one will believe a word you say against that of a Federation Court. You have no proof of anything against Starfleet, no way to make anyone believe that whatever you say isn’t simply the ramblings of a lunatic. No one will ever know what happened to you. You have nothing to offer that we don’t already own, and you won’t live much longer anyway."

 

Khan stared at them, unconsciously trying and failing to stop the involuntary trembling in his limbs. He was used to being treated callously or viewed as a tool, a weapon, a thing to use. But he wasn’t used to being dismissed as having nothing to offer. His usefulness, the superiority of either his mind or his body had always been his last recourse. This was a far more terrifying situation. One that left him completely unable to protect his people. The cold sweat on his skin made him feel even more feverish, and he fought to try and stay focused despite how much his head was swimming.

 

His body was reaching its limits. He felt poised on the edge of a slippery precipice, and he was closer and closer to falling. Shaken and out of options, he tried whatever came to mind.

 

"You think no one will find out? It does not matter who listens to me, I'm the very proof of your lies. Of Marcus's lies, of all the laws he broke to make all of this possible. There was far too much at stake. Someone is bound to look into this, and a simple blood test would immediately reveal that I am neither ‘John Harrison’ nor a normal human! Someone-"

 

Dr. Adams interrupted him then, and the scientist's voice was chillingly close when he spoke, from the foot of the gallery, standing by the guards not far from the enclosure.

 

"It's a good thing no one will ever examine your body, then... Well, only a post-mortem after the execution, but I’ll take care of that and that report will be classified as well. Whatever proof your body could be doesn’t matter, no one will ever know. You'll die hidden away, and we'll close this case once and for all."

 

The augment’s heartbeat was hammering in his ears as he felt increasingly dizzy, tugging uselessly on the restraints, no longer bothering to conceal his efforts, but finding anew that the rail was unyielding, at least to his currently extremely weakened body.

Through the fog of his exhaustion and growing panic, he heard one of the admirals declare that they would proceed to the sentencing now.

 

Dizzily, uselessly, he heard himself begging again, and to his horror, it was to no avail, the same as when he’d broken down and begged Marcus.

 

_No..._

 

Unable to unleash externally the wrath he felt, it deepened instead the self-loathing that had been growing within him through this whole ordeal.

_You failed them, you failed them all. And your failure has condemned them._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D ♥
> 
>   
>   
> Not too much happened, but I didn't want the chapter to become super long, so this one is mostly... just Khan's introspection about the past and Starfleet. The plot resumes with the next chapter. XD; 


	9. The Turn of the Tide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The quality of mercy is not strain'd,_   
>  _It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven_   
>  _Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:_   
>  _It blesseth him that gives and him that takes._
> 
> The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187
> 
> * * *
> 
> I'm horrible, each time I think I'll update faster and then take forever. D: Sorry! ~~Hopefully next time it won't be as bad.~~  
>  In case everybody forgot what was going on, José is Commodore Mendez from TOS, and Jim woke up from coming back to life, only to find out Khan's trial was that day, and was a sham.

* * *

**Stardate 2240.??**  
(??? of 2240)  
Time: ???

Iowa

* * *

 

 

 

He was seven years old again, playing with Johnny in Iowa.

‘Johnny’, whose real name was George Samuel Kirk, but whom the whole family called Johnny because Winona had had too many breakdowns, finally decided that trying to call him George was too painful, and his middle name ‘Sam’ just never caught on.

 

The two boys would spend afternoons in the barn near the house, tapping on the wall to send 'secret messages' in Morse code, even if most of the time Johnny only understood a couple of words in each of Jim’s messages.

Johnny would get annoyed and yell at him for tapping too fast and Jim would laugh and laugh, that innocent, crystalline sound that embodied childhood itself pealing into the air and echoing in the barn.

 

A teacher had suggested the old book on outdated communication methods as a method for collecting bonus credits over the summer, and none of the students in Jim’s class had gone for it except for Jim. "Ass-licker", the others had muttered, ever bitter towards the one whom they viewed as the “teacher's pet”. But Jim never did it to score points, he was just genuinely interested --and fascinated by books and history in general. On most days he was a stack of books with legs, anyway.

 

He fell for the Morse code completely, carrying the book everywhere, learning all of the letters and trying to rope Johnny into learning it too. He was only mildly successful in that though, the older boy never developing more than a vague interest in it, mostly just to humor Jim.

 

When Johnny would tire of it for the day, Jim would run through the fields by himself, waving a stick around and tapping letters in code on the dry hard-packed ground, swishing his makeshift sword among the tall grass in between the messages, then tapping more words on a large rock he loved to climb by night, to lay on his back and look at the stars.

 

He’d stare at the sky and play at composing messages no one but he understood, tapping them on the rock as if he was talking to the stars. It had started out as a way for him to make-believe as if he was talking to his mom, out there somewhere in the stars, but over the years Jim had started to just confess his innermost secret thoughts to the universe itself, talking of his dreams and of just about everything. The companionship of the stars was a replacement of sorts for the warmth that was sometimes lacking in the child’s daily life.

 

In the end, Jim had gotten in trouble with Frank because of reading the book so much that the cover was badly worn --a small child can only be so careful, even when trying his best, and antique books could be so fragile and pricey-- so when Frank saw the damage, he was furious, afraid the school would make them pay for it.

 

That had been the end of the boy's Morse code summer.

 

Jim took the book back to school on shaky legs, still crying from the beating he'd gotten, and the teacher thought his tears were over the damage to the cover or the bent spine of the book. Frank was always good at doing it in ways that others didn’t notice, and Jim knew better than telling on him and risking a worse beating.

  
As it turned out, that volume was from the teacher’s private collection rather than from the school, and she had been so happy that for once one of her pupils had been interested in it, that she didn't even complain, consoling Jim and wiping his tears away instead.

 

The child’s sunny disposition returned full force when she promised to lend him another antique book about a different subject. There was just something fascinating about paper books, something about the smell of them and the feel of paper under you fingers, that elicited in him an appeal somehow far stronger than that of reading digital copies. That and from what he’d been told and the things they still had in the house, his father had always liked antiques of all kinds, so Jim felt drawn to anything from the past as if it was a small bridge to something that had been missing, even if he didn’t always consciously recognize that link.

 

Bittersweet as some of the memories from that time of his life may have been, Jim had been so interested in the Morse code and had played at making up messages in it for so long -- doing it even from time to time in the years that followed the book incident -- that even now, what felt like a lifetime later, if he strained his memory he could still remember all the letters...

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
San Francisco

* * *

 

 

Kirk snapped out of the dream-memory from his childhood with a jolt, feeling disoriented and momentarily not even sure where he was.

 

A deathly cold had settled in his body, chilling him all the way to his bones while he’d been unconscious. He shivered feverishly and took in the surroundings, suddenly even unsure where he was. He remembered the Enterprise going down, the desperate struggle to reach the reactor core and stop that from happening, and then… Dying.

For a brief instant, he couldn’t breathe, trapped in the horror of that memory, and then the rest came to him; he gasped, drawing air into his lungs as if he’d been drowning.

 

He remembered waking up in the hospital, Bones’ words, Spock at his side…and José, telling him of Pike and of Khan and of so many horrible things. Starfleet destroying itself from within.

 

In his daze, Jim realized that the middle-aged man who had been driving the hovercab was shaking his arm softly to wake him and let him know they had reached HQ. The man was looking at him with concern. Kirk tried to smile reassuringly, but he realized he must look like death warmed over. At least he hadn’t croaked in the poor man’s cab; that would have been a pitiful end for someone who had survived so much.

 

Despite the exhaustion, Kirk forced himself to get up and stumbled out of the vehicle in a hurry, hoping he hadn’t lost too much time.

 

_Now, came the hardest part._

 

There was no way in hell Jim was going to let them execute someone, let alone 73 people in order to conceal their corruption.

  
He wasn’t going to let Section 31 destroy Starfleet and all that the institution stood for.

Even if that meant possibly sacrificing himself to stop them.

 

He only hoped that Spock and the others might be able to continue their careers under a different captain. He had no illusions about Command not roasting him alive for this once he’d done what he was planning. But he had to do it. No matter how much he may wish to be the first in line to kick Khan down for killing Pike, it just wasn’t right. If they let this massacre be committed in the name of the Federation, they were no better than Marcus.

 

\---

 

José Mendez had gone from vengeful hatred to sobering horror over the course of the trial.

 

And while he saw the same feelings reflected in many of the other officers present, the fact that none of them would be able to stop the sentencing or the execution was likely as forefront in their minds as it was on his, stopping any of them from speaking up.

 

He rubbed his hands over his face, a sinking feeling in his heart growing as he watched the prisoner crumbling more and more. Gone was the sense of righteousness Mendez had felt at the beginning of the trial, replaced by a bottomless pit of guilt. Never had he seen a person reduced to this, helplessly offering their life and more, trying to do anything to save their loved ones and being refused over and over, pushed to extremes of despair.

 

_Jim was right. Jim was so right. This is a nightmare. And we’re all guilty._

 

He’d considered standing up and speaking in favor of the prisoner, or at least, in favor of justice and of a fair sentence rather than this sham, but he knew that all that would do was harm his career prospects without achieving anything. Apparently, each of the other officers with mixed feelings about the trial had came to the same conclusion, as no one dared to speak against the court. It was shameful and base, but it was human nature, or at least the expression of its weakest aspects.

 

A part of José wanted to speak up anyway, just because it was what was right. Though he wasn’t sure if that was due to a sort of selfish weakness for the sake of saving at least his own conscience, even knowing that Khan and his people would be condemned no matter what he said.

 

Just as he was strongly considering throwing it all to the wind and saying something anyway, his communicator vibrated inside his uniform jacket, startling him.

 

José opened it as discreetly as he could and twisted his body sideways to hide the action from most of the crowd as he answered.

 

Kirk’s voice came through slightly slurred but clearly determined.

 

"José, I'm at HQ. I’ve made it to the turbolift on the way to the hearing rooms.” A brief, breathless pause, and then he continued, “But once the doors open, I will probably be stopped by Section 31 right away. I need you to come fetch me so the guards in the corridor will let me into the trial room. Alone, I don’t have the clearance."

José felt the blood drain from his face. Just when he thought everything about this trial couldn’t get any worse.

If it was possible to yell at someone while whispering into a communicator as silently as possible, José succeeded. "What?! No, Jim! What are you thinking?! I can't do that!! Stop that turbolift and head back down before you get yourself arrested!”

However much he may be panicking in hushed tones, José had the dreadful feeling that the eyes of everyone in his immediate vicinity in the gallery were on him and his conversation. Being caught on his communicator in the middle of a court hearing would be bad enough --contempt of court was a thing, after all-- but being found to have leaked classified info, even video footage, would be far worse. _Jim wasn’t even supposed to know about the trial!_

Maybe this mess could still be saved: Jim could tell the guards in the corridor that he picked the wrong floor by accident and the turbolift would simply carry him away, away from this nightmare and back to safety.

The trial would come to an end, Khan’s execution would hopefully be swift and not too horrible, and this dreadful affair would be over.

At least, this would all end without dragging Jim too into it, even more than he’d already been dragged in by Marcus. They’d all be guilty by association, but Jim could still be saved. _And my career won’t be dashed to pieces…_ Like any other officer, José had ambitions he wasn’t willing to abandon, after all.

And maybe one day, José and the others here could forgive both themselves and Starfleet for what was about to happen, what they were all about to condone by allowing it to pass.

_Just maybe._

His hands shook a little, a detail José only noticed when he felt the vibrations carry through the area where the communicator was still pressed to his ear as discreetly as he could manage by hunching over and hoping the attention of all the bigwigs was elsewhere. _Perhaps distracted by the bleeding man still pleading with them for the lives of his family…_ José clenched his teeth and wished he could be blind to the scene.

Cuffed to the rail surrounding his enclosure, still shaking from exhaustion and blood loss, Khan looked haggard and lost, his gaze somewhat feverish as he stared at the Starfleet brass presiding over the ‘trial’ on one side, or glanced briefly to the other side at the lesser officers in the gallery across the room.

His face was ashen, streaked with blood from earlier, drying in dirty tracks interrupted by sweat and tears that not even he had been able to prevent from falling. Cornered and unable to save his people through physical nor mental ability, he was stripped of everything he had left.

He seemed barely conscious, and over and over, his parched lips formed words of bargaining and entreaty that were probably not unlike those he’d once addressed Marcus with, at the height of his despair --or at least, he must have thought it was the height of it, then.  
Everything was so much worse now, and the augment seemed so dejected that his words were more like a hopeless prayer to the Admirals, rather than something he truly expected to see come to fruition. And yet, terrified of the consequences of his failure, he had to keep trying no matter what. Abject despair and fear for his crew churned inside him and overpowered even the rage that he must still be feeling.

But the men and women in the high security room were all sworn to secrecy, and all had some tie or another to Section 31. For them, this wasn’t so much a trial as a formality to cover themselves up with a classified court martial should anyone later try to dig into what happened.

Even if that hadn’t been the case, it was obvious from the way they looked at Khan that the augment was already condemned.

The earlier attempt at escape before the trial had only further confirmed their view that he was a dangerous animal, a thing not-quite human, a product of another time and too much of a risk to keep alive any longer.

José’s fingers clenched powerlessly around his communicator, and he cursed his inability to do anything to stop this.

Jim’s insistence was the one thing that finally pierced through the fog of it all.

Even as exhausted as it sounded, Jim’s voice was so clear, so innocent and pure, that to José it suddenly felt unreal in a world that, at the moment, seemed so deeply tainted.

That innocent voice continued to utter far too convincing words into his ear.

"You said it yourself, José. That I was part of this all. That I deserved to know. That Pike wanted me in… That there’s no ‘they’ and ‘us’."

_That means we’re all responsible for whatever they do to him._

Jim saw it as clearly as he did, or even more so. Not only that, Jim was also stronger than him. He wouldn’t let this happen without trying to stop it. Even convalescent and just off a hospital bed, Jim would fight the injustice.

_And he’ll doom the both of us in the attempt._

But then, this was Jim.

Jim, who regularly beat all the odds. How many times had José and others joked about how crazy Jim was, about the Kobayashi Maru, about his tendency to never give up and to always find a way where everyone else swore there was none?

_If there was someone who could make the impossible possible, it’s Jim._

And if all else failed, José would be slightly less guilty in his own eyes than if he did nothing at all, even if he would also be condemning them both by letting Jim in. He only hoped Jim wouldn’t regret the professional suicide they were both about to commit together --if they were lucky and didn’t end up worse off, with trumped-up charges of treason for siding with the enemy.

José’s voice sounded more sure than he felt.

"Oh hell. Fine. I’m coming to get you, you crazy bastard. But if this blows up in our faces, you better expect an ‘I told you so’."

"Thank you, José. I'll take full responsibility."

"Yeah right… As if that would help me!"

 

 

\---

 

 

If the grumbling and the glares José could practically feel on his back when he extricated himself from the row he’d been sitting in and slunk towards the exit as discreetly as he could weren’t bad enough, the return with Jim in tow was a billion times worse.

 

Especially since Jim --who looked as pale as a corpse and barely able to stand but seemed to find his second wind the moment they stepped into the trial room and made their way back to to the seat José had in the gallery-- instantly stood at the rail and addressed the court, loudly and clearly, interrupting the sentencing proceedings. _Great. He’ll get us arrested even faster than I was expecting._

 

But to José’s surprise, the Admirals were apparently too shocked by the blond’s presence in the room to react as badly as they might have if anyone else had done it. Maybe his recent bout of coming back from the dead had mollified them, or maybe Jim’s arrival was just too mind-boggling to let them react normally. Or their unexpected silence could be due to Jim’s natural charisma, and his fame for having saved the planet during the Narada incident. José could only hope that whatever it was, the effect wouldn’t disappear too fast.

 

Admiral Barnett was the first to break the spell and stop the blond to ask, "Kirk, what are you doing here? And why are you wearing a commander's uniform?!"

The amount of pips on his shoulders was hard to see from afar, but there was no mistaking the difference in the insignia for the dress uniforms. The shiny circle around the command badge that a captain’s dress uniform would sport was visibly absent from Kirk’s jacket.

"I'm sorry for my appearance, Sir. I came directly from the hospital. I needed to get here on time to offer my testimony in a matter of major importance. I’m afraid that a terrible injustice is about to be done."

 

The Admirals weren’t the only ones deeply surprised by his arrival.

 

The prisoner was perhaps even more so.

 

Khan was still on his knees, half-slumped, half-hanging by his wrists from the railing of the dais, shaking softly from exhaustion and blood loss. José wondered if the reason the augment had remained that way was because he perhaps no longer had the strength to get back up. Between the state of injury he was already clearly in and all the additional blood he’d lost, it was no wonder.

 

Nevertheless, Khan was more alert now than he’d been in quite a while.

 

Craning his neck up towards the gallery, the augment’s fevered gaze was glued to Kirk, a look of utter puzzlement on his gaunt face.

 

Khan’s features were so worn and battered by now that it was hard to see that, but behind the obvious confusion and exhausted expression, the intelligence that that superior mind still possessed was clearly discernible even now. As was the fact that Khan was struggling to come up with reasons that made any sense for the interruption, and even more so, for Kirk to be risking himself for him. And there could be no doubt Kirk was definitely risking himself, challenging the Admirals and the trial with no holds barred.

 

Admiral Cartwright was having none of it. He interrupted the blond’s appeal to the court, displeasure evident in his voice, "I don't get it Kirk, you have the gall to claim that this man is innocent?!!”

 

"No, Sir. I think he's a complete bastard who deserves to pay for his crimes. But there's some innocence in everybody, even him.” Outraged gasps could be heard from the gallery and from the judiciary alike. A frown of surprise or further confusion appeared on Khan’s face.

Before any could object, Kirk rushed to continue, the pause having given him time to catch his breath. “He definitely has to answer for the many crimes he is guilty of. Making him answer for them was always my intention. But it's not fair to try him for all the potential dangers we assume his kind could represent, rather than for things he's really done. And then there's the matter of his crew who had nothing to do with his actions in this time, and who are about to get a blanket condemnation for all of them. Not to mention, Sir, the citizens of the Federation who might also be affected by setting such a dangerous precedent."

The Admiral shot back, sarcasm dripping from his voice, "Dangerous precedent? Are you talking about the danger to the people he might kill trying to escape, like last time?"

Throughout the court a rumble of agreement could be heard, as well as displeasure at Kirk’s intervention. It did not deter the young captain in the least.

"No, Sir. While Khan is indeed guilty of causing the death of many innocents during the crash, I would like to point out that what set all of this in motion was his attempt to escape from slavery at the hands of a Starfleet Admiral.”

Between sentences, the blond breathed shallowly and quickly, attempting to catch his breath before speaking further, rushing to connect the sentences before someone interrupted him again. At his mention of Marcus, dissenting voices rose in the court, but he pushed through nevertheless.

 

“He has crimes to pay for. But so do we all, who let all of this happen in the heart of our Federation, and only discovered it once Alexander Marcus had nearly succeeded at starting a war. We were blind to it all, and we share a burden of responsibility in the consequences. But it is now in our power to keep from making this same mistake a second time. To give this man a fair judgment. And to protect our citizens from being entangled by corrupt schemes the way Marcus entangled him. If we just kill him and bury it all, who is to say that it won't happen again? And who is to say that another genocide of an even larger scale won’t happen when it’s a different species that is labelled ‘too dangerous’?"

 

José watched the discussion unfurl with interest. While the Admirals were clearly not receptive to Kirk’s defense, they weren’t rebuking him anywhere as hard as they had done when Khan had defended himself and his actions. It was not really a surprise since Kirk was a Federation hero while Khan was a criminal and already condemned in their eyes, but it still made José wonder where this might go. His gaze flicked from Jim to the Admirals, and then to Khan, who was apparently doing the same as him, alternating between hanging off each of the captain’s words and glancing back at the Admirals to see and analyze their non-verbal reactions to Kirk’s words.

 

Kirk plowed in further, and José found himself amazed by the young man’s resolve. Jim’s knuckles were white from how hard he was holding onto the gallery rail, drawing strength from his grip to stay standing upright and speaking so clearly, even when he was looking even paler than earlier. He may not be injured the way Khan was, but José was finding himself wondering how Kirk was even able to make it to HQ, especially by himself. The young man’s willpower seemed far stronger than his body.

Dark spots were floating in Jim’s vision, making it hard for him to focus on each individual Admiral. Everything was blurring up and he could no longer discern their faces, so he simply went with the flow, his gaze sweeping over the assembled brass along the opposite wall as he spoke, his voice rising into an impassioned boom as he neared the end.

 

Amidst the stunned silence of the tribunal, Kirk thought he heard Khan’s breath hitch near the end of his tirade, but he couldn’t be sure. The augment was closer to the gallery than the Admirals and therefore Jim could still see him a little more clearly. Khan was looking up at him with a mixture of awed hope and extreme apprehension, and Jim couldn’t quite understand that particular combination.

 

It was like being in the eye of the storm, that brief silence and the unreal feeling of the room threatening to spin out of control from how dizzy he was.

 

And then, just as fast, it erupted into loud protests. Maybe Jim’s momentary luck was over, or maybe he’d pushed it a bit too far. His ears were buzzing and everything was getting harder and harder to focus on. The only thing that felt so oddly real at the moment was that unsettling and unreadable stare that Khan was still giving him, his sunken eyes burning like hot coals in a campfire at night.

 

Right when someone made to call for the guards to remove Jim --and José, whose part in this had not gone unnoticed and who looked like he was wishing the ground would swallow him-- there was a commotion by the door.

 

Until that moment, José had thought Jim and he would be doing this to prove a point at worst --even if just for the sake of not being part of this sham, at least. Or, at best, in hopes to actually convince enough people in the room to stand up for justice, no matter how much they might individually hate Khan. This could prove impossible though, considering most in the room were Section 31, save for maybe some of the brass who were there only by nature of being in Starfleet Command.

 

It was only now that José suddenly realized that this whole time, Jim hadn’t been truly hoping to sway the room at all. He gave them a chance to change their minds, but he never really expected to convince them.

 

Kirk was just stalling for time, as a diversion to delay the sentencing long enough for whatever he’d been planning.

 

What came to pass then was the very last thing José --or perhaps any of those present, save for Kirk-- could have expected.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that you might spot is my own addition post-beta, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize me! :D ♥  
>   
> Also, sorry that the slow-burn is SO SLOW. At least they looked at each other in this chapter. XD;;; lol


	10. Salvation or Uncertainty?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Ay, every inch a king._  
>  (4.6.122), King Lear
> 
> * * *
> 
> So sorry for taking over a year to update. D: It was a busy year and then I had a huge writers' block for the longest time.  
> But I'm still alive, finally back to writing, and have no plans to abandon my fics. :D 
> 
> The good news is, the next chapter is about ready, so at least that won't take forever. ^^;
> 
>  
> 
>  **In case everybody forgot since it's been so long:** They're at Khan's sham trial by Section 31, trying to stop it. Back when Jim was at the hospital he asked Spock Prime to help him fix this. (This particular bit happened in the fic back in 2014, so by now other fics have come out which also touch on the subject of asylum and help from the Vulcans, since it's inevitable that this be a common theme considering it's Jim and he would naturally ask Spock. I just wanted to mention it was already set up back years ago, so no one thinks I came back to life and ripped off someone else's fic or anything. lol)
> 
> Also, Mendez is that friend of Jim's who appeared in the Menagerie in TOS. He showed Jim the video of Khan in jail, and unwittingly started this whole mess. XD

* * *

  **Stardate 2259.72**

(March 13th 2259)

San Francisco

* * *

 

The doors were flung wide open, and the entire assembly turned to gape in shock at the group now striding into the room.

 

The guards who had been in the corridor, blocking the entrance to the courtroom when Kirk had arrived, were nowhere to be seen now, and they had clearly let pass quite a large group.

 

At the head of the delegation was Sarek of Vulcan, flanked by several tall Vulcan guards in traditional attire, dressed as they would have been at the Vulcan embassy for ceremonial occasions, their long lances every bit as dangerous now as they might have been in times long gone, before Surak, back when Vulcans were less controlled and more prone to martial savagery than logical reasoning.

 

Even without shedding a drop of blood, the presence of the Vulcan ambassador’s escort alone made quick work of persuading the Section 31 guards left inside the tribunal from barring entry to the group.

 

It would later be discovered that the guards in the corridor had been swiftly dispensed with by way of Vulcan nerve pinches, a most unconventional situation.

 

To make things even worse -- at least in the eyes of José Mendez, who was already worried enough about how far down the drain the two of them had flushed their careers-- Jim bolted from his friend’s side and hurried as fast as he could down the steps of the gallery. His presence wasn’t really needed for Sarek’s entrance but he still pushed his way through to try and help as much as he could so that the ambassador could reach the center of the court as quickly as possible.

The young Captain seemed to be animated by a newfound breath now that his plan --whatever that may be-- was nearing completion. It was hard to believe this was the same man who could barely stand a moment ago. He had to be running on fumes and burning through his very last reserves. Jim’s willpower always seemed to somehow go above and beyond his body’s limitations.

 

Most of the officers in the way stood aside swiftly, staring in shock as they let the Vulcan group pass. A Starfleet Security major tried one last attempt to block the ambassador’s path with a rather lukewarm “Hey! You can’t...!!" as Sarek’s retinue shielded their leader and pushed through unfazed, while the man simply stood and stared impotently.

The Vulcan elder retorted in passing, calmly but loudly enough for the rest of the court to hear, "On the contrary, I can. And I must. As a founding member of the Federation as well as a long-time benefactor of Earth, Vulcan has a vested interest and an inalienable say in the matters of any Federation species in danger of extinction.”

 

A cold wind seemed to blow through the assembly at Sarek’s words.

One of the admirals cut through the stunned silence, "Ambassador, could you clarify to which species you are referring?" There was a kind of stunned dread in his voice, which was most unexpected from one of his rank.

"The one of which you were holding the last seventy-three specimens prisoner, Admiral: seventy-two in stasis and one right here, being tried before this...court.”

Sarek motioned for an elderly Vulcan scientist from amidst the delegation to come forward. The old Vulcan did so and addressed the court.

“We have examined the prisoner’s genetic material from blood samples taken during recent events, and have concluded that while the subject is definitely a form of human, the DNA differences are enough to classify him and his people a species of their own.”  
Sarek thanked him and, as the other Vulcan stepped back into the group, added, “With so few of them left, it would be a crime against nature to execute even a single one of them."

 

All eyes in the room were riveted to the ambassador. Khan was staring at him perhaps harder even than the Starfleet officers were.

Kirk’s eyes strayed to the augment for a moment and he was taken aback by the look on Khan’s face. It was as if all blood had drained from it, leaving Khan frozen between hope and despair. He seemed to be holding his breath, unsure which emotion to swing towards.

The admirals on the other hand, looked for the most part outraged, and it was only court decorum that was holding the lower-ranked personnel in the gallery back from protesting as loudly as they wished to.

 

Sarek’s words were completely true, which was precisely why they were so frighteningly hard to deny for the assembled brass.

Nevertheless one of the admirals still blurted, “They… They are war criminals. Condemned to death...” His confidence in the argument seemed to be mounting as he made his way through the sentence, but he didn’t get to finish it before Sarek interrupted him, the Vulcan’s rebuttal resounding through the room, and the calm with which he delivered it making the words feel even more definitive.

“In the eyes of laws that are centuries old, yes. As far as we know, they were in all likelihood summarily condemned in ways no different from a makeshift court held by a lynch mob, on the basis of their race, rather than any form of real trial judging their individual actions. But even if the matter had been duly legal, and without discounting that Earth legislation has changed considerably since then, or the fact that the statute of limitation for a number of these potential crimes would be long over, the fact remains they are an endangered species.”

The Vulcan ambassador made a brief pause to let that sink in before delivering the coup-de-grâce, “As such, the Vulcan High Council has ordered the seizing of all seventy-two cryotubes from the storage facility where they were being held. Due to the urgency of the situation, that order has been carried out already. They have been moved to the Vulcan embassy, where they were given official asylum status, before their transport departed to an undisclosed location within the Confederacy of Surak-”

At that, the court did finally erupt into a flurry of protests and even shouts from some. Demands to know when that had been done or how it was accomplished so fast and how they were not warned exploded and then died down as Sarek, unfazed, continued speaking.

“The cryotubes are already en route to their new location, where they will be stored indefinitely, or until a properly sanctioned and non-military Federation court settles on an acceptable option to awaken them within a protected environment, if such a thing is viable. As an endangered species, they cannot be harmed in any way. The Vulcan High Council will not allow anything to be done to put them at risk for any reason.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Or the jaws of the admirals who were currently staring in horror at the Vulcan ambassador.

 

They were well aware that considering the power the Council had --even after the destruction of Vulcan-- Sarek was most likely not bluffing. All that would be needed to pull this off would have been the knowledge of the location the cryotubes were stored in, and a skilled task force.

Section 31 had held secret the existence of the augments, and with the potential danger of increased scrutiny following the Vengeance crash, they had been moved out and had no longer been kept in a high-security facility. It would have been a temporary move, and should have been a non-issue since they were frozen anyway.

Several Admirals in league with Section 31 were cursing up a storm internally, not having expected that any of this information could have been leaked, much less so soon.

 

José Mendez was sweating heavily and, glued to his seat, was silently wishing everyone would forget who had snuck Jim Kirk into the room in the first place. This was taking things far beyond what he could have dreamed of even in his most vivid career-related nightmares.

There were only so many people who knew where the augments had been held, and Mendez was well aware that there was no chance the connection to him would not be made, especially since he'd accessed the video feed to show it to Kirk earlier that day.

 

Jim was having trouble containing his joy, and how awed he was by how thorough Sarek --and Spock of course, Spock Prime, who had set all of this in motion all the way from New Vulcan-- had been.  
None of this would have been possible without them, or without the younger Spock also, who had been liasoning with them from the hospital after Jim’s departure, sending them information about Khan’s blood and helping set everything up despite how many misgivings he had about Jim’s urge to intervene in this. But no matter how much he trusted them, Jim had never expected everything to go so well or so quickly .

Standing next to the Vulcan delegation, the young captain was now at the foot of the gallery, face to face with the wall of admirals, not far from the enclosure Khan was still chained to.

 

Meanwhile, Khan stared at the proceedings with a bewildered look, lips parted as if he was either hyperventilating or simply beyond realizing he was gaping, too focused on processing the news to concern himself with his own appearance --eons away from the poise he would have wanted to maintain if the circumstances were better.

Jim wondered whether Khan’s body might finally be too exhausted to handle the sudden influx of information, because despite the good news, the augment looked aghast, for the most part. Kirk found himself surprised at the fact that he was finding the look on Khan’s face unexpectedly endearing, in a way; something he’d never expected to think of anything the augment did.

 

Their eyes finally met, and Khan was so evidently filled with fear for his people that Jim couldn't help taking pity of him. Knowing that the attention of the room was focused on Sarek --who was now answering questions from the top brass about the upcoming proceedings-- far more than on him, Jim held the augment's gaze, then slowly, began blinking the letters 'CQ, CQ' in morse code, to make sure Khan recognized what he was doing.

The augment quickly caught on and answered the ‘call’ by blinking back a much faster “What are you doing?!” in flawless morse.

Kirk answered, slightly slower than Khan, a bit from being rusty and a bit from adapting to blinking in order to signal the letters rather than tapping them, “I made you a promise. I guaranteed the safety of your crew.” He was sure he’d blinked each word right, but the augment still didn’t seem convinced, so he added, “Your people are safe. Beyond the reach of anyone who might harm them. I never break a promise.”

In a way, Khan looked like an abused animal being given food or shelter for the first time, and expecting someone to strike it as soon as it lowers its guard. The mental image erased the smile from Jim’s face, but it only further solidified his determination to see the augment through a real, fair trial. Which, admittedly, was more for the sake of Starfleet than Khan, as had been his intention from the start. But seeing the augment like this, so diminished and so desperate, Kirk would have been unable to claim that the instinctive yearning for justice he felt was entirely for the sake of Starfleet only.

 

Right about that moment, and before the two could focus further on their secret communication, Sarek delivered his next blow against the court.

"Furthermore, given that the defendant was pressed into service by force, in a manner akin to the slavery that has been long outlawed in the Federation, and given that he was never a sanctioned member of Starfleet, trying him in a military court is highly... _irregular_."

 _Illegal_ was the word he left hanging in the air, but it was plainly obvious to them all, and sent shivers down the spines of many of Starfleet’s finest.

Sarek continued, "Whatever sentencing this court would have arrived at, it would have been overthrown in the appeal stage.” The brief looks of amusement on the faces of some of the brass at the mention of Khan even getting the chance of an appeal were immediately wiped away the moment Sarek uttered the next part. “Especially with the likely outcry once the matter is widely known to the press."

"Press? What press?!" There was an underlying tinge of panic in one of the admiral’s voices.

Sarek twisted the blade in the wound by calmly stating, " It is only logical: such a remarkable scientific discovery demands that the press be notified. Especially when such a measure might be required to ensure the survival of said species.” There was a clear threat in the words, before he finished, “As a result, the Vulcan embassy is ready to hold a press conference and disclose the discovery at any moment, if needed. And the issue of the corruption and ill-advised choices Admiral Marcus has made remains also a subject that requires public accountability, and as such the press has already been notified of parts of this. As a founding member of the Federation, Vulcan, and by extension its representatives, has a moral duty to uphold the laws and tenets of this institution, and to ensure that any erring we witness in our fellow members is duly addressed."

 

The stunned silence in the whole assembly was such that you could have heard a fly buzzing. Some of the admirals exchanged silent glances that spoke of contingency plans and of everything Section 31 might have at risk.

Even Kirk himself, who had discussed the press possibility with Spock as a potential last recourse, was not expecting it to develop so fast or so dramatically.

Earth had not received such a brutal rebuke from the Vulcans since the early days following Zefram Cochrane’s discovery of warp speed, when the Vulcan High Command’s meddling in Terran policy had become common as a counter-balance of the technological help the Vulcans provided.

 

Once the initial shock wavered, some almost dared to voice what they were thinking. That New Vulcan and the smaller colonies that composed the Confederacy of Surak were far from the Vulcan of old, which had had Earth willingly rushing to cater to its every whim and admirals falling over themselves to grant any wish of a Vulcan elder. Now that they were nothing but a few thousand refugees, their 'confederacy' reduced to the survivors on a brand new colony and a meager few others scattered around other potentially vulnerable outposts, they no longer wielded the same amount of raw power.

But even if Starfleet had been able to get away with an open affront --or worse, implied threats-- to the Vulcans without facing direct retaliation from the rest of the Federation --something that would not be so easy, as they all knew--, it still remained that Vulcan technology was far superior, and Earth depended quite a bit on it. Between that and the undeniably vital position that Vulcan diplomacy held within the Federation, avoiding a confrontation with them was a real necessity.

For a moment it seemed as if the higher members of the court were pondering whether to call it and see if the Vulcan’s posturing would crumble or if it would hold.

But they were each individually afraid of damaging their own reputations, especially now that the cat was out of the bag. Should the Vulcan Council really be backing its ambassador with their full power --which it likely was if the information about the cryotubes having been seized was true-- Starfleet would lose face terribly if the Vulcans chose to escalate the matter.

 

Ultimately, each of the top brass had too much to lose individually by taking the risk of calling Sarek out to see if he was bluffing. And even with the power Section 31 might still have, there was no doubt that if things soured and the Vulcans pressed for sanctions against Earth from the Federation as a whole --especially for, say, slavery and attempted genocide of a protected species-- several admirals would be at risk of being sacked most dishonorably. As a group, they would likely have been able to weather the storm, but individually none of them wanted to risk their skin, or trusted the others enough to be sure they wouldn’t turn on each other to save their own position. As it was, with the press aware of what Marcus had been doing, it was only a matter of time before a number of them had to scramble to save their own positions.

The wind was changing directions, all thanks to a masterful move spearheaded by the youngest captain in the room. They may not know what hand Kirk had played in it or how much of it had been his idea, but they knew he was mixed up in it somehow. If the the glares leveled at him could kill, there would be nothing left of Kirk.

None of them had expected the young man to actually be a realistic obstacle to their plans, even when he’d interrupted the trial. He’d seemed insignificant enough then, all the more so with how pale and exhausted he seemed.

They had no way to know that he’d only been stalling to give the Vulcans time to set this all into motion.

 

The attention focused on Kirk made it all so much more dramatic when, once it was clear that it was over and that Sarek had the admirals cornered against the proverbial wall, Kirk sighed in relief before his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed heavily and suddenly, like a puppet with its strings cut. His limp body nearly hit the ground before the ambassador and the two Vulcan guards who were closest caught him, all three having reached for him when he fainted.

Mendez, who until then had seemed more concerned with sinking into his seat and disappearing, bolted upright the instant Jim fell, and ran down the steps of the gallery to reach him, irrationally afraid the young man might be dead rather than just unconscious. Jim may have dragged him into a world of trouble but he was his friend. His concern for Jim overrode all thoughts about his career or the fact he was implicating himself further in the whole mess.

And regardless of whatever consequences Mendez might fear they could both end up facing from Starfleet, he knew Jim had done all this for the right reasons, however much José might personally disagree with parts of it.

The collective sound of surprise in the room gave way to a myriad of murmurs and conjecture over the entire situation.

 

Nevertheless, even with all the background noise, José heard loud and clear when the prisoner blurted out an unexpectedly concerned-sounding  "What's wrong with him?!” in a cracked voice, parched lips quivering from the effort to keep himself more-or-less upright and hanging onto the banister of his enclosure, trying to better see the unconscious Captain.

Mendez felt a flare of fury wash through his body.

 

_The gall of this man._

_No._

_The gall of this thing. This animal._

 

José saw red, rage rushing through him like heat to his face. With quick steps, he breached the gap between the Vulcan group still holding Jim upright and the augment’s enclosure nearby. He planted himself in front of Khan, up close to his face blocking his view of Jim and practically growled out, "He died on that ship! He died by your fault, you piece of shit. Or nearly did. He was in a coma until today, and the first thing he did after he woke up was come here and save your sorry ass!! What do you think is wrong with him, huh?!"

Khan, paler than ever and clearly struggling to stay conscious as well, still held surprising composure in the face of a confrontation, and did not shrink back in the least at the commodore’s attempt at intimidation. He seemed utterly unfazed by his presence, in fact.

It was the information which Khan seemed to take like a blow.

 

Ignoring the man in front of him the instant Mendez was done speaking, the augment’s gaze swung back to Kirk, shock clearly written all over his features.

“I...did not know… I did not think…”

His voice was even breathier than before.

 

Mendez --uncertain whether the renewed surge of anger he was feeling was at being ignored so blatantly by the augment, or if it was at Khan's words-- snapped at him again anyway, and hissed out, “He didn’t do this for you!! The point wasn’t to save you! It was for Starfleet that he did it!!”

 

But Khan did not seem to hear him at all. All of his attention was focused on Kirk. The look of shock on the augment’s face was further exacerbated by the shallow breaths he was drawing, his whole body struggling to keep functioning, gaze glued to the Captain.

 

\---

 

He hadn’t known.

Not only that Kirk had been in a coma. He hadn’t known that the captain had died at all.

He'd only fired to disable the Enterprise. He'd never expected it to lose power and begin to fall. It must have been more damaged than he knew from Marcus' attacks, or from going to warp speed without being completely repaired from Section 31’s sabotage. He hadn't expected the ship’s systems to fail at all. But then, at the moment it had happened, the thought had vanished fast; with the explosion of the torpedoes, he had had far more dire things to focus on.

After that, everything was a blur of pain and horror. The belief that he'd lost his family, --that he'd just seen them die right before his eyes just as he'd finally, finally believed he’d succeeded in saving them--, had momentarily robbed him of his sanity.

 

Even now, it felt so unreal to know that they were alive. It was like waking up from a nightmare so realistic that it was hard to find one’s bearings. He was simultaneously overjoyed that they were out of Starfleet's hands and terrified of what the Vulcans would do to them --a people of cold hard logic; for all he knew they might be more prone to live experimentation than humans. Even now, his body still bore injuries from the beating he'd received from Kirk's first officer, made worse by the tests performed on him since then, and he no longer had any trust in his misinformed beliefs about Vulcans being unable to lie, much less to break rules and bones.

The part of him that was too tired --and too broken up to be able to keep going in the same horrible way as he had for so long-- was desperately clinging to the mad hope that what Kirk and the Vulcan ambassador had said was the truth, and that his people were safe.

The rest of him had been betrayed, used and abused far too many times to still believe so easily, or even carry much hope at all, especially in a situation like this.

 

_It could not be._

 

No one did him any favors without exacting a heavy price in return.

The world seemed to have declared war on him and his people since the moment they had been born, and no matter how superior a man he might be, there was only so much he could do alone.

Or even with seventy-two others. So much more could have been accomplished with an entire army as in the past, but even those armies had been defeated, in the end. The odds never ceased to get worse since the end of the war.

 

Stalling until he could rescue his crew, then escaping and getting as far away from Earth --no, from the whole Federation now-- as possible… Those had been his intentions when Marcus had been alive, and it was still their best bet for survival now.

_Escape together, before they kill us all or worse. Run as far as we can and never look back._

To hell if it didn’t sound proper or warrior-like. His people would still be alive, at least. That was what truly mattered the most. Their wellbeing.

  
And for that, Khan would accept any humiliation. He had already accepted so many anyway. Throughout his life and more recently under Marcus. What difference did it make, one more?  

Whatever it was that the Vulcans wanted from him or from his people, there was no one to stop them from taking it. And it would be taken, sooner or later. In his current condition, Khan could not prevent that. His best hopes would be to delay and stall.

 

He resigned himself to wait for the other shoe to drop and see exactly what they would demand of him. He had no other choice for the time being.

Until he could do better than that, the priority would be to wait and heal, delay the inevitable as much as possible until he was strong enough. So that at the first chance he could escape and rescue his people.

 

It was the only way.

 

Or at least, the only way he knew.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that you might spot is my own addition post-beta, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize me! :D ♥  
> 


	11. Promises made, some broken, some kept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up._   
>  _And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave."_
> 
> Moby Dick
> 
> * * *
> 
> Hell froze over and I'm updating a new chapter after only a few days! \\*-*/  
>  ~~I wish it would be like that with each chapter, wish me luck for the next. XD;~~
> 
> Warning for this chapter: Brief mentions of rape in the past. (The one that happened some chapters ago.)

* * *

  **Stardate 2259.72**

(March 13th 2259)

Starfleet Medical,  
San Francisco

* * *

 

 

“Take off your clothes, please.”

The elderly doctor seemed benign enough, harmless even, and aside from acting somewhat guarded and distant, there was nothing worrisome about his attitude. He was utterly non-threatening.

It was just that these words... They had preceded far too many horrible things in Khan’s life for the augment to not see them as a threat, even when worded as a request like this. There had been too many times when it was not so.

_Take off your clothes, now, or you’ll regret it. Or those you love will regret it._

_Take off your clothes, so we can cut into you again._

_Take them off, so we can…_

 

_And so on and so on…_

Khan stared at the wall, forcibly making himself snap out of a lifetime of memories that started with that phrase. His head was still swimming from blood loss and he was finding it much harder than usual to focus, and to maintain his usual apparent aloofness. He realized that he was gripping the side of the examination bed/table he was sitting on so tight that he had to remind himself to relax his hands or he would bend the metal on the side of it very soon, even with how weakened he was.

“No.”

He enunciated the word calmly and met the doctor’s gaze with a calculating look. It was a test, just to see what would happen.

 

If the doctor threatened his crew he would obey and divest immediately. But for now he just wanted to see what were the new boundaries he had to comply with. No sense in submitting to anything before knowing how far he could push and what he could get away with.

The old man sighed, “Mr. Singh, I need to examine you. You’re injured, possibly badly so. This is not only to see how severe it is or to take care of your injuries. It is also in order to add to your trial’s file. You are a victim of illegal medical procedures as well as of obvious prisoner abuse. There is evident major trauma, even just from what I can see with your clothes on. The wounds need tending to, and the culprits must pay for what they have done to you. It’s in your best interest to cooperate with the examination.”

The doctor seemed sincere, but _‘it’s in your best interest’_ was often code for _‘do as we say or suffer the consequences’_ , and it did nothing to reassure Khan.

 

This old man won points with him by surprisingly addressing him by a part of his actual name rather than the travesty that Marcus had named him, but Khan had lived his whole life in a dark world where people in positions of power over him were far too often either trying to take advantage of him, or kill him. And he was far too disillusioned to trust easily, much less some random unknown doctor; for all Khan knew, the man might be just one more sadist in a lab coat just waiting to get him strapped to an operating table.

The contempt dripped from the augment’s voice as he replied, “You can scan me while I keep my clothes on.”

There. It was like a chess match. He’d made his move, now he would see if the doctor would continue playing nice, or whether he would escalate it.

In truth, he hated the clothes he was wearing, an unpleasant reminder of his incarceration and of anything having to do with it, but he would rather keep them than be even more vulnerable without them. And if he were to break free he would need some sort of clothing until he could procure something better to blend in. Nevermind that he was covered in blood. It was still better than being naked. A coat or jacket could be stolen somewhere and would cover up the blood and injuries, if he managed to escape.

To Khan’s surprise, the doctor looked annoyed but gave in and began scanning him with a medical tricorder, perhaps wanting to get things started already rather than insist any further. He couldn’t treat the augment with his clothes on, but he could still assess the worst of the damage.

 

The proximity between them, especially that of the little hand-scanner the doctor held, was unpleasant, but Khan couldn’t well back out of it now that he’d given his consent to the scan. He hoped that the relative limited range of the portable device would mean it would only pick up major damage such as broken bones or lacerations and muscle damage. Especially since he was sitting and the doctor was scanning the front of his body.

But when Boyce reached the hip area and lower, the sudden change in his expression made it obvious that the machine was scanning in-depth detail, and keeping no secrets.

“You were…” Boyce’s voice wavered from shock and his gaze shot up, suddenly meeting the augment’s. The doctor’s voice died in his throat at the sight.

For a brief instant, so fast that anyone not looking right at him would have missed it, the mask had slipped and what Khan had been trying to hide was fully visible on his face, before he quickly schooled his features again. The doctor stared at him, but it was all gone as fast as it appeared, and Khan’s face was once more a blank and untouchable mask…with the exception of his eyes, so expressive and so filled with anger and hurt. So quick to go from wounded to cold and furious.

 

The stormy green of his pale gaze had turned dark, as if daring the doctor to say the wrong thing. The venomous anger and distrust in those eyes made the doctor decide against the comforting words he’d intended to say, not wanting the augment to potentially mistake them for pity or mere platitudes.

Boyce turned around and went for a nearby cabinet, feeling it was best to be direct and get it out of the way as fast as they could.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get you a rape kit.”

Khan nearly lunged forward on the table as he growled, “NO-”

 

But just as the augment’s protest erupted, the door slid open and Jim Kirk walked in, on unsteady legs. The doctor and the prisoner froze in their tracks and went dead silent all of a sudden, staring at the young man in an almost comically shocked manner that belied the seriousness of the moment.

The door closed behind Kirk, giving only a quick glimpse of the guards, still outside and failing in their attempt to peek inside when the captain entered the room. When they had brought Khan in, they had wanted to cuff the prisoner’s wrists and ankles, and Boyce had been the one to adamantly refuse to examine a man chained to a table. They were in Starfleet Medical, not in a prison after all.

The guards had nevertheless been convinced that the unrestrained augment would skin the doctor alive or worse, and were expecting to be called in for an emergency at any time.

They also did not fancy the continued presence of the group of Vulcan guards farther down the corridor. They weren't sure what was happening, but felt it should be up to Starfleet to guard its prisoners.

Jim blurted out, “Am I interrupting something?”, breaking the silence in the room. Boyce threw a glance in Khan’s direction. The augment met his gaze with a terribly cold look that could only be described as a remarkable effort at hiding all the horror he was feeling. The doctor already had the box containing the compact rape kit in hand, and quickly pushed it back into the cabinet, out of sight of the captain. That surprised Khan, and so did Boyce’s response to Kirk.

“Not at all, Captain. But you should be in bed focusing on your own recovery, not risking your life running around outside, breaking into corrupt trials, and butting into other people’s medical exams.”

There was a clear fondness in his voice and a tired smile on his face, like an elderly family member scolding a wayward child, and it immediately clued Khan in on the closeness between them. But what surprised the augment the most was that Boyce didn’t immediately give away his recent discovery. Khan wasn’t expecting to be given any privacy.

 

Jim ignored the chiding and strode right up to Khan. The position between them was oddly reminiscent of the moment on the _Enterprise_ when Kirk had talked to the augment, in Medbay, as the _Vengeance_ hung threateningly above them. Once more, Khan’s position sitting on the examination table made him appear taller than Kirk, but that did not seem to faze the captain anymore now than it did then.

And once more, Kirk had Khan’s crew, and Khan had nothing, only a mad hope that maybe, just maybe, he might find a way to make it so that everything wasn’t utterly lost for them. Last time, Kirk had protected them, but he’d also betrayed him later. What would it be this time?

So once more, Khan watched the young captain approach him, eyeing Kirk with a mixture of gratitude for intervening in favor of his crew, and wariness from wondering what he might do to them now.

When it was the old doctor who had stood near him to scan him, the augment had closed his legs and edged his body away from him, partly from his natural distrust of anyone who wore a lab coat, and partly out of some irrational hope that putting more barriers in the way of the small hand-held scanner might impede the machine from identifying the nature of some of the damage he’d recently suffered.

And yet, now that it was Kirk, the augment unconsciously and automatically parted his legs to leave Kirk room to face him and come closer to the table. He caught himself only after the fact, once it was too late to close them without losing face, since the captain was standing between his parted knees. It brought up a strange feeling of added vulnerability, but oddly it didn’t feel the same with Kirk as Khan was sure it would have felt if anyone else had stood this close to him right now. Especially at a time when his body and mind both felt so raw and pushed to their limits. He adamantly squashed any treacherous attempt his exhausted limbs made to tremble, and held his breath, scrutinizing the young captain’s worn-out face.

 

Kirk looked pale as death and as if he already had a foot firmly planted in the grave. He spoke in a slightly breathless voice, looking at Khan at first but addressing the elderly doctor instead, before looking back at Boyce properly, with a contrite smile.

“I was on my way back to my hospital bed, believe it or not. Bones escorted me to my floor, giving me an earful about my escape. But I just couldn’t go yet, I had one last thing to do.”

Kirk pulled a mini PADD out of his jacket and Khan’s blood went cold. _No. Not again, and especially not from you. No..._

But the words that came out of the captain’s mouth were the very opposite of what the augment was expecting.

“I might not get to see you for a while, and I thought it would be wrong to go without showing you your crew. Just so you know for sure that they’re safe and well.” _Just so you don’t do anything stupid out of worry for them and screw this all up,_ was what the captain left out of his sentence. The last thing they needed was Khan potentially attempting escape and going on a rampage in the process.

 

Jim hoped that being reassured about the safety of his crew would mollify the augment into biding his time and not doing anything rash. At least not just yet. And then, after the proper trial, hopefully Khan would be locked away for a long time, far away from Starfleet and anyone he might harm, and then, everybody could finally put this all behind themselves and try to heal their collective wounds.

What showed up on screen was exactly what Khan had thought the captain would be showing him, but for the very opposite reasons.

Kirk typed in an access code and loaded the video feed, turning the device around so Khan could see.

“They’re at all times under close protection by the Vulcans and I can check on them at any time. Nothing will be done without my knowledge. They’ll be completely safe and out of reach from Section 31 or anyone else with any intent to harm them or use them for anything. They’ll stay in stasis as they are now, closely monitored only to make sure there are no malfunctions in the cryotubes or anything going wrong.”

 

Kirk made a pause to catch his breath, and Khan noticed that the captain’s pallor as well as the trembling in his hands had increased significantly even after such a short time holding up the padd. Kirk’s voice was strained but still strong despite his obvious exhaustion, “It’s as I promised you. They’re safe. I’m guaranteeing their safety. And we’ll make sure that in the next trial, a _real_ trial, where you actually get judged for what you’ve done rather than what you are, we’ll put in a plea to the Federation, so that hopefully they accept to consider awakening your family, of course depending on your good behavior.”

"How… How did you get the Vulcan Council to…?" Khan was in part genuinely puzzled, and in part desperately trying to garner additional information to assess how safe or not they truly might be.

Kirk’s expression was closed off, but sincere. "I have friends in high places."

"Trustworthy friends?"

"Ones I’d trust with my life and more. Not just friends. _Family_."

Or at least, Spock --both versions-- was like family to Jim. The rest of the Vulcan council went with it because of Spock’s political power within the new colony, as well as because of the generally accepted idea that their species would have been almost entirely annihilated if not for Kirk’s intervention. Within the limits of logic, of course, no favor would have been refused to Kirk on New Vulcan.

Khan stared at him as if the captain had just told him that the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around it. He was so used to having his worst expectations confirmed that he didn’t know how to react to the captain’s mercy. He stared in disbelief, finding no lie in Kirk’s eyes, and froze, trying to process the situation. He’d been expecting all along to be told the price he would have to pay for this, or worse. Not to have Kirk speak of it all as a done deal with nothing expected in return.

It didn’t help that he was still reeling from the hellish afternoon and the gruesome two weeks he’d spent in captivity, not to mention everything prior to that. He wasn’t exactly functioning anywhere near his best.

“Family…” Khan repeated, sounding almost as breathless as Kirk. In his case, it wasn’t merely physical. The surprise of Kirk keeping his promise after all, had knocked the wind out of him.

 

And so it was, that this agreement of sorts was sealed, with that simple word and with the sincerity in Kirk’s gaze.

The captain continued, exhausted but visibly determined, “I’ll personally draft a proposal for a potential colony for them, to be selected and set up depending on how well things go with you. The idea is to get the Federation to accept that if you go through a fair trial and abide by your sentence properly, your good example might earn your crew a chance to one day be awakened and given an independent colony of their own. Otherwise, they will remain in storage in stasis and it would be as if your ship was never found, but they won’t be touched or harmed in any way. No experiments, nothing. That’s my promise.”

Endless stasis, unable to live or die, was a horrible fate, something Kirk considered worse than death itself. But it was a last recourse, which he was only presenting as a deterrent, hoping that it would make Khan behave for the sake of his people, to earn them that potential colony.

 

However distasteful he might find the stasis option, and however dangerous an isolated colony might be, Kirk didn’t think reintegration into normal society would necessarily benefit the augments at this point. Jim would have preferred if Khan could be made to remain with his crew as well, and for them all to be given some remote planet somewhere out of the way where the augment could lead his people and they could do whatever the hell they did without endangering the Federation, but that ship had likely sailed by now.

It was a double-edged blade, because on one hand, Jim felt that putting people like Khan and his crew in a reorientation centre was a colossal waste, very much akin to brainwashing a tiger into accepting to live locked away inside a small dog kennel. But on the other hand, Khan had done things that couldn’t possibly be swept under the rug. The colony might be possible for the other seventy-two, but he doubted the Federation would ever let Khan go free now, even to some distant planet.

And so many of these were things Jim himself would _never_ willingly sweep away, either. The blood on Khan’s hands was fresh, his latest kill only hours ago. And that was without considering the previous ones.

A surge of deep sorrow and anger coursed through the young captain at the memory of Pike’s lifeless body on the ground.

 

For a brief instant, Jim felt dizzy and lost his balance. He automatically grabbed for the nearest thing to avoid falling --which just so happened to be Khan’s biceps.

Khan’s hands shot forward the instant he realized Kirk was falling, instinctively gripping the captain’s forearms and steadying him with a surprisingly gentle hold.

If anyone else --a Starfleet officer, no less-- had grabbed Khan’s arm or any other part of his body, the augment would have reacted very differently.

Kirk was always and ever the great exception to this, to everything.

But Khan didn’t have time to ponder on that strange realization; Kirk reacted faster than the augment had expected that he still might be able to in his state, and had slapped Khan’s hands off him.

The young captain backed away quickly, looking revulsed as he practically hissed the words at Khan, his voice trembling with emotion, “Don’t you fucking touch me. You shot and killed him with those same hands!”

Khan froze, not expecting the outburst.

Kirk swayed again, but Boyce caught him before he could lose balance. The two of them shared a look, in between glaring at Khan. There was so much grief in both of their eyes, a clear mutual understanding passing between them, the old doctor and the young captain equally united in their losses.

The augment stared at them, befuddled only for an instant before it all clicked into place in his mind, this moment connecting to the memory from Kronos.

 

_‘On behalf of Christopher Pike --my friend-- I accept your surrender.’_

 

When he attacked the conference room, he’d tried to only target top brass Section 31 personnel, going as far as avoiding the soldiers and other small cogs in the machine, even when they were firing anti-air turrets at him. He’d only aimed at admirals, people who would know about Section 31.

But despite his attempt to minimize the damage, he’d killed someone close to Kirk.

_Not only close._

_One who was family too, clearly._

And Kirk, who had _every right_ to want to see him suffer for it, had instead inexplicably spared Khan’s own family.

Unless it was all part of a twisted ploy to destroy them later and inflict the worst possible kind of vengeance on him, but that didn’t seem to be the young captain’s style. No, Khan had seen too much of Kirk to think him capable of this level of turpitude, even after the betrayal on the _Vengeance_. Kirk had never broken an actual promise he’d made him -- even the betrayal had been a consequence of the captain’s earlier promise of ensuring that Khan would pay for what he’d done.

 

And Khan had seen plainly the sincerity in Kirk’s eyes when he spoke of fair trials and colony proposals, such painfully innocent ideas that Khan hadn’t even dared to dream them possible before the captain voiced them.

Kirk really intended to carry through with it all, and to free his people. There was no deceit in him -- of that, Khan was sure, if of nothing else.

The resentment he had borne the captain for turning against him and having him stunned on the bridge of the _Vengeance_ was long gone, vanished from the moment when Kirk stepped in and saved his family once more, this time guaranteeing their safety more surely than with anything he’d done on board the _Enterprise_.

By Khan’s own moral code, Kirk had a right to attempt exacting vengeance on him, and yet, now that he held in his power the means to do Khan more damage than anything else could, the young captain had chosen instead a display of magnanimity.

And so, in Khan’s mind it followed naturally that he owed Kirk more than he could repay in a lifetime.

 

_But_ **_why_ ** _did Kirk save them?_

Why help an enemy, all the more so after said enemy was completely defeated?

_Vengeance, of course._

Why else would anyone go through all the trouble Kirk had gone for him?

 

That the captain had gone as far as risk his life to stop the execution -- and so shortly after his close encounter with death no less -- was even more proof of how committed to that personal vengeance Kirk must be.  
A vengeance entirely focused on the one who was guilty, rather than focused on those he loved; it was only to be expected of a man with a conscience like Kirk. All the pieces fell into place naturally in Khan’s mind.

That certainty furthered Khan's determination. Everything seemed so much easier now that things were clear. Now that it all made sense in a way that he could relate to. He finally knew what was expected of him if Kirk managed to pull this all off.

 

The price to be paid for the survival and freedom of his people was bound to be high.

His life belonged to the captain now, in repayment for his debt. Nothing short of that would do. He would have to die to repay Kirk.

 

_I had thought I was Ahab for so long._

_That Marcus, Section 31, Starfleet, were the whale._

_But perhaps I was wrong, it seems I am Moby Dick after all…_

_And Captain Ahab deserves his vengeance._

 

Before he could say anything about his thoughts, however, the door opened again, this time giving entrance to the _Enterprise_ ’s doctor, barreling in and clearly furious with worry for his friend and captain.

“Jim, what the hell?! What did I say about sneaking off again?! Spock must have a damn search party looking for you by now.”

Before the captain could protest or explain himself, he was enveloped in a rush of southern fury and quickly swept away, presumably to go back to his own sick-room, and according to McCoy, to be strapped to bed so as to not wander off yet again.

Khan was left staring at the closing door, and at Boyce’s back, as the old man saw them off and remained behind. The elderly doctor seemed deflated, bereft of what energy he’d still had left earlier when he'd argued with the augment about the importance of the examining him.

Once only the two of them were left in the examination room, Khan made a quick visual sweep that revealed no cameras as far as he could tell.

He did not trust the system, or the upcoming trial. Not one bit.

But he trusted Kirk.

And if there was _any_ chance, however remote, that the captain was right and the next trial might not be a sham...he would not make the mistake to leave out anything incriminating. He would exploit everything that could be used against his enemies. No matter how shameful or damaging to himself.

He despised their system but he wasn’t above playing it against them, if it turned out to be the best strategy.

Even if that meant subjecting himself to even more humiliation and misery to gather evidence.

 

The set of his jaw was determined when he started suddenly removing his shirt and loosening the ties on his pants before sliding them down his hips. In a strangely quiet and hoarse voice, he called for the older man.

“Doctor. If you would get the kit you mentioned, I will allow you to examine me now.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that you might spot is my own addition post-beta, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize me! :D ♥  
> 
> 
> And if anyone was wondering why I used Boyce:  
>   
> 


	12. A Warm Touch In The Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"All days are nights to see till I see thee._  
>  _And nights bright days when dreams do show me thee."_  
>  (Shakespeare, Sonnet 43.)
> 
> * * *
> 
>  **Warning:** Mentions of post-sexual-abuse medical stuff in this chapter.
> 
>  **Also, just in case:**  
>  The augments being considered an endangered species and having protected status as a result + help from the Vulcans is an idea I had **back in 2013, and which was the premise of this fic since the beginning.**  
>  There have been a number of other fics on this subject since then (naturally, since it’s a logical conclusion to there being only 73 augments left, as well as to the fact that in any universe Kirk would of course go to Spock for help, either of the Spocks, so it's a very logical course of action), but I just wanted to add to the notes a reminder that this is not written in reaction to any other fics on the subject, and vice-versa. :)

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72**  
(March 13th 2259)  
Late

Starfleet Medical  
San Francisco

* * *

   
As Boyce’s instruments and the old Doctor’s gloved fingers spread him open and probed him deeply, Khan laid on his back staring at the ceiling above, willing himself to keep his breathing controlled and appear unfazed. Now that the lives of his crew were no longer hanging in the balance of his impassivity, it was becoming strangely hard to maintain that flawless façade.

The extreme exhaustion and blood loss were also playing a role in it. Khan had to actively force himself not to flinch when the doctor’s fingers slid inside him, cold and unyielding.

Boyce had already looked deeply troubled since earlier on, when the tricorder had picked up the signs of damage from sexual abuse as he had begun scanning Khan, but his face had fallen even more once the augment had consented to undress, and the removal of the bindings all over his body had unveiled extensive scar-tissue mid-healing and numerous fresh injuries from sample collecting and experimentation.

But perhaps the worst shock was when Boyce went around the table to examine the augment’s back. He unwrapped the bloody bandages around Khan’s gaunt waist and hips, revealing the seizure-triggering Orion device still clamped gruesomely to his spine, its prongs digging into the bone. Blood oozed along the edge of the metal box, from wounds that hadn’t had the time to even scab over yet.

The augment’s weakened state slowed down his healing, and everything was visible in even more vivid horror than it would have otherwise been.

The hitch in the old doctor’s breath and the way he put his tricorder down on the table much harder than he might have meant to were testaments to how different this doctor was from the Section 31 researchers. Khan did not delude himself into expecting the elderly doctor might feel any empathy for him personally, but the apparent compassion for a patient’s injuries --and the shock Boyce seemed to feel at the sight of acts that violated the Federation’s supposedly civilized ideals that people like Kirk seemed to hold in such high esteem-- did mollify Khan a little bit.

He had not expected the elderly doctor’s genuine concern, especially considering how clear it seemed that, like Kirk, Boyce had been close to Admiral Pike. Khan had been fully expecting Boyce to take advantage of the situation to retaliate, at the very least, to cause him some pain. He had been willing to put up with it for the time being, for the necessities of the data collection for the upcoming trial.

But the old doctor was apparently too honorable to let personal grudges get in the way of treating a patient. He seemed to be sincerely horrified by all the damage he encountered during the examination, and to be handling Khan as gently as possible, as a result.  
  
Khan found himself tentatively wondering if perhaps there were other exceptions like Jim Kirk out there, even if he didn’t dare to allow himself to entertain that dangerous thought too much. From his personal experience, hope was far too much of a risky slippery slope.

But nevertheless, even with gentle precautions, the process was still deeply unpleasant by nature. Especially once the surgery to remove the Orion box was completed --it had been deemed the most urgent part-- the wounds were tended to, and the remaining data collection for the rape kit proceeded.  
As the doctor recorded notes about the injuries he found, and probed even deeper with a slender instrument that entered Khan and spread him open, the augment clenched his teeth and forced himself to make no sound. This was necessary. This would help crush his enemies and give him an advantage when it came to ensuring a better situation for his people. He had to remind himself to breathe, to force himself to stop overthinking and logging every tiny movement of the tools stretching him wide.

The shame and the humiliation would all be worth it, if it helped his people. It was no different from the things he’d done for them before. It was only harder because of how exhausted he was physically and mentally.

The sight of the ceiling blurring above him was an odd reminder of the many times he'd spent on surgery tables in his early childhood at the labs, close to losing consciousness and trying to hang onto it, knowing it would be worse if he wasn't awake to know what was being done to him. Even in the moments when he had no choice whatsoever, Khan had always preferred to know every detail, rather than choose a coward’s way out --at the very least, he could memorize the faces of everyone who hurt him or his people, for later. He’d become exceedingly good at that throughout his childhood and early adulthood. It was why he never forgot a face. But those memories were not helping right now.

Khan breathed shallowly and tried to blink his eyes back into focus and past the embarrassing moisture that was threatening to collect in them. Maybe it was in part those older wounds of a different nature, deep mental scars that would have crushed a lesser man, that made it so hard to remain aloof now.

So Khan used an old trick that had never failed him yet, and focused his emotions on anger instead of letting the pain flow to the forefront. Anger was easier to understand, easier to accept. Far better than suffering, or the fear he would never allow his enemies to know he felt.

Better than all of the feelings associated with the complete loss of control over his fate that his life seemed to always gravitate towards, no matter how hard he fought it.

His face remained a perfect mask of cold fury, but his fingers were clenched around the edges of the table so hard that even in his weakened state, he left dents on the metal as he desperately gripped it for purchase.

_Breathe in, breathe out. Slow and controlled, he reminded himself._

 

 

 

* * *

**Stardate 2259.72 ~ 2259.75**  
(March 13 ~ 16th 2259)

San Francisco

* * *

   
The report the elderly doctor wrote up had painted a very damning picture of Section 31, and by extension, of any Starfleet officials associated with it or with the abuse the augment had suffered at their hands. The guards may have secretly done some of it, but the medical experiments were unacceptable, and either way, everyone in the chain of command was to blame for the negligence of having allowed it all to happen.

Even just the highly illegal Orion device which Boyce carefully removed from Khan’s spine --a good couple of hours of surgery to carefully extract it-- would have been enough to make many heads roll among the brass who had authorized such a violation of Federation law.

Everything combined was so much worse, especially considering it was impossible to deny that the damage occurred while the prisoner had been under Starfleet custody.

 

The night after the botched first trial, in the hours that followed the exhausting and humiliating examination, Khan was taken to a surprisingly unmilitary-like holding cell in the Vulcan Embassy. It was heavily guarded, but it had actual furniture --bolted to the ground as it may be-- and more privacy than he’d had in what felt like an eternity.  
  
Khan was too keyed up to rest though, and paced the room back and forth until exhaustion forced him to reluctantly sit down on the bed, rigid and tense.

At peak condition, he would have found it easy to remain awake for longer than this and still be able to fight off a sudden attack. But with how injured and weakened he was, it was a very different situation.

He spent the following hours staring at the door, forcing himself to stay awake and aware enough to fight, waiting for the inevitable Section 31 attack, abduction, or whatever else was inevitably coming. 

Nothing came, save for a breakfast tray in the morning. He’d been sitting ramrod straight on the bed for hours, his hands clenched on his knees and his attention focused on the door, but as the first hours of dawn neared, the weight of all the past days was hanging more and more heavily on his shoulders and extreme fatigue was threatening to shut down even his augmented body.

He was dangerously close to dozing off when a Vulcan guard briefly opened the door, just enough to slide the tray of food in --while another one pointed a phaser rifle at the bed just in case.

It didn’t quite fully take Khan by surprise, but the mere opening of the door was enough to nearly send him into fight-or-flight mode. Exhaustion slowed and dulled his reflexes, something which his instincts counterbalanced by making him jumpy and agitated, speeding up his reactions but making them less calculated and precise.

When the guards left, Khan’s heart was beating so fast and so hard that it sounded deafening. He stared at the food in the tray from afar, as though something might come out of it and lunge at him. He had no truly rational reason to expect the food to be drugged, since it came from the Vulcans, but he assumed it anyway.

Refusing to budge from the bed just in case, he tried to regain control of his body. Breathing exercises had always helped him in the past, no matter how badly injured he was. It was no different now. His heartbeat soon returned to normal, but the exhaustion was still there, wearing him down further and tearing at the edges of his psyche. Still, he stared at the door and waited.

A lunch tray was delivered at some point in the afternoon, and later a dinner one, each one replacing the previous ones that Khan left untouched. Doctor Boyce came by to personally inspect his wounds and change his bandages. The old doctor had already seen more than Khan wished anyone would ever see, so he made no opposition to it. It was in his best interests to heal as fast as he could, anyway.

Realistically, Khan knew he couldn’t remain awake forever. He also knew that it was ridiculous and pointless. If Kirk’s hopes panned out --and provided the Vulcans didn’t decide to vivisect him or worse, something Khan had no control over but wasn’t yet entirely convinced they wouldn’t-- he would have to sleep at some point.

But there was nothing completely rational about so many of the things that had happened to him over the past year. So he couldn’t help the the sense of imminent doom that kept rising within him the longer time passed without Section 31 barging through the door.

When night fell and still no attack came, he found himself puzzled and irritable, as well as hating how much trouble he was having to stay awake. The temptation of the food wasn’t helping. Augments could go a long time without eating, but his body was physically and mentally ravaged, and the now-cold dinner tray still near the door was becoming more tempting by the minute. But if Kirk was wrong in trusting the Vulcans, who knew what might happen? He told himself he would have to eat sooner or later, but he would postpone it for now. For as long as he could.

By the morning of the second day, Khan had still not eaten or slept, and still no attack came. But he’d had to give up on his perfect posture, opting instead for sitting on the bed with his back leaning against the wall. The trays still came at regular intervals, sending him into a spike of anxious expectation of a conflict each time, but he was now also having to fight his body’s attempts to shut down. Microsleep seized him for a few brief seconds from time to time, before he could subconsciously trudge his way through the clinging molasses of exhaustion and force himself awake with a jolt.  
It brought more memories of the past, of long watches so many years ago, his people and him taking turns making sure the ones hunting them hadn’t found them yet; memories of clinging to wakefulness with the ever-present thought that even a moment of sleepy inattention might be enough to miss seeing the signs of an imminent attack, and that failing would mean all their deaths. It was not so now, but who knew what might happen if he slept?

By the time the dinner tray came, he’d been forcing himself awake by pressing his nails into the palms of his hands so hard that he’d broken the skin in several spots. The sting helped a little; it was better than nothing.

Doctor Boyce came by again, and tsk-tsk-ed at him, evidently aware of his bloodshot eyes and refusal to sleep or eat. It almost mollified Khan --because he’d started to accept that Boyce was trustworthy enough, due to the old man’s behavior and compassion being reminiscent of Kirk-- but what if the doctor was also too trusting? He could mean well but be fooled by enemies. What if all that they --the Vulcans, Section 31, Starfleet, anyone else-- were waiting for, was for Khan to sleep?

It was irrational. Deep inside, he knew it was. If they wanted him asleep, all they had to do was flood the room with gas. It wouldn’t be the first time Section 31 used that. He was sure the Vulcans had similar methods when needed. But why take one more risk? He couldn’t stop them from gassing him, but he could at least limit the risks he had control over.

The dinner tray remained untouched, and Khan spent another night without closing an eye.

On the morning of the third day, as he was fighting a dizzy spell to try and remain awake, a rational thought at last pierced through the veil of manic weariness. It dawned on him that his state was such that he would be completely useless if the enemy did come for him. He could have fought if it had been only those three days, but with the injuries and all the time spent with Section 31 before the trial, he was running on fumes.

He leaned his head back against the wall and fought to remain conscious nevertheless, but darkness was enveloping him; not even his augmented strength able to keep his body going anymore. Still, he continued to fight, trying to force himself awake again.

Oblivion swallowed him, at last.

 

In the dream, he found himself on his back, strapped to an examination table.

Harsh light from above blinded him and confirmed his certainties and fears about where he was.

He was naked, tight metal bonds biting into his skin, unyielding. There was pain, as usual. Anesthesia was hit-or-miss, and generally avoided anyway as it could throw off test results. His head lolled against the hard surface of the medical table and he despised how helpless he felt. He appeared to have been prepped for some sort of surgery.

But right as he expected to see a doctor looming over him, probing hands and sharp blades ready to cut him open one more time, the face that entered his line of sight was Kirk’s, peering down with a strangely caring look.  
  
Kirk spoke to him, and although Khan could not hear the captain’s words, he somehow knew they were reassuring. The compassion on Kirk’s face made the fear and anger bleed away, replaced by an odd feeling of awe and gratitude, the memory of the enormity of what Kirk had done for his crew piercing through the haze of the dream.

Khan felt a strange yearning, the unexplainable urge to be free from his bindings not for the sake of escaping, but so that he could reach up and touch Kirk, to give him whatever it was that the captain may want. It was a fuzzy and half-formed concept, devoid of any concrete structure within Khan’s exhausted mind, but the yearning to somehow repay Kirk was palpable, and so was the idea that no reward was too high for what the captain had done.

Kirk touched the augment’s arm. His hands were warm. _So warm._ Khan remembered them being warm on Kronos too, Kirk’s punches burning with passion and sorrow, but the touch was completely different now. The pads of Kirk’s fingertips ran along Khan’s bare skin and anchored the augment to the touch, like shelter in a storm.

The metal bonds were gone, inexplicably. So were the harsh hospital lights.

Above him, Kirk smiled, radiant to the point of rivaling the sun, the warmth of his expression mirroring that of his hands still touching Khan, and the augment stopped fighting his own body, allowing himself to finally sink into a much-needed deeper sleep.

 

He woke from the dream feeling strangely more rested and at peace than he’d been in years. His injuries and the residual weariness still made his body sluggish, but his heart felt much lighter than it had been in a long time.

He was still on the same bed in his cell at the embassy, but had apparently slid along the wall from his sitting position, lying down on his side at some point. Somehow, the dinner tray had arrived without him waking --a mortifying realization-- and apparently without any harmful consequences either.

Doctor Boyce was at his bedside, fixing a bag of some liquid --nutrients, apparently-- to a long pole safely secured to the bed. When the old man approached him with the needle, Khan looked up with bleary eyes and considered fighting it. But he could still feel the warmth of Kirk’s fingers on his skin as if it had been real, as if it was but an instant ago. His eyes closed of their own volition and he drifted back to sleep, vaguely registering the prick of the IV being inserted into his arm once he was already halfway unconscious.

_Somehow, it would be okay._

The words in his mind sounded more like Kirk’s voice than his own.

 

 

 

* * *

**Stardate 2259.75**  
(March 16th 2259)

San Francisco  
Starfleet HQ

* * *

   
If not for all of the evidence collected, Khan might have ended up incarcerated in a high-security facility for life, or worse, brainwashed at a reorientation centre until he was no better than a mindless machine capable only of the most basic things.

But with the recent scandal over Section 31 corruption, and the threat that Khan’s existence might be made public, (resulting in significantly worse inquiries about the late Admiral Marcus’ shady dealings --something that hadn’t happened yet, but Starfleet wasn’t taking any chances after all the recent revelations), the actual trial of his crimes ended up taking a completely different direction from what the augment had been expecting.

In fact, completely different even from what Kirk had been hoping for.

So much so that as soon as Kirk was doing a little better and had been pumped full of enough drugs that he could set foot outside without the risk of toppling over unconscious or, worse, dying of sepsis due to his compromised immune system as he recovered from the radiation poisoning-- the captain found himself back at Starfleet HQ right in time to get chewed out into tiny pieces by Admirals Barnett and Chandra.

Luckily, a side effect of the stuff McCoy had pumped him full of made Kirk a bit air-headed for the moment, feeling as if he was seeing the world through a film of water, which made the process of getting yelled at by both admirals for over two hours slightly less egregious.

During some moments, it was almost like a sort of out-of-body experience, mentally floating around the room in a bit of a daze as he watched them both tear into him. He tried to will his face and body to look as serious and contrite as he could manage.

It was likely that his past deeds saving the Earth, and his current on-the-verge-of-keeling-over-dead aspect were mitigating things slightly. He didn’t want to think of how much worse they’d be chastising him otherwise. As it was, it was bad enough that he was seriously regretting how much he’d annoyed Bones by asking non-stop to let him leave the hospital for a bit at least. Being cooped up in there had been driving him crazy, but being yelled at in HQ wasn’t a more desirable situation.

Had it been Pike grilling him, he would have tried to explain himself and defend the justice behind his intentions. But he’d viewed Pike as the closest he had to a replacement for the father he’d been missing his whole life. He had never viewed the rest of the brass with the same closeness.

_Fuck._

That train of thought only served to bring back the hurt.

_Pike._

A surge of pain and regret so deep that it nearly made him nauseous lurched through his stomach. He didn’t regret doing what he believed was right, but if Khan had been in front of him right now he might be tempted to do a repeat of Kronos, no matter how irritated he might feel about how useless it would be, now as it was then. All the more so with how weak he still was. It was only days ago that he’d awakened from the coma. He probably couldn’t effectively punch even one of the synthesized jello dishes the hospital kept trying to make him eat, much less an augmented soldier.

He tried to push the pain and the loss into the back of his mind for now, and focus on what the two admirals were telling him, at least once they were past the spiel about how they would have wanted to court-martial him and hang him out to dry if not for the bad press that would bring right now.

 

Apparently, some of the admirals who had been aware of Section 31, but who disagreed with the late Admiral Marcus on some of the more extreme actions he had taken, had been preparing a motion against the sham trial. The plan was to stop the execution and get Khan and his people indefinitely confined to cryostasis in a secure location. It was frozen imprisonment with no end in sight, but it was better than execution. A number of them had felt that killing the augments, aside from being against Federation law, was simply a terrible waste of potential resources.

They had hoped to have their faction gain the upper hand over the cohorts of Command that might have favored Section 31 more heavily, so that they might enforce that decision in the long run as well. At least, that had been the plan part of Starfleet was going with...up until Kirk and the Vulcans had interrupted the trial, throwing it all into disarray.

Of course, with that kind of plan there was an extremely high risk that said “indefinite storage” might turn into potentially handing Khan and the remaining augments right back into Section 31’s hands at the drop of a hat. But the two admirals focused on the part about the faction upheaval and omitted mentioning the likelihood of that possibility to Kirk, not wanting what they viewed as his naïveté to potentially result in another poor meddling attempt which might make things even more complicated for them. Better to let him think things were far more under control than they were, and that Command was actively combatting Section 31 from the inside.

Kirk generally understood enough to read between the lines, but there was too much he didn’t know about the extent of the rot within the system, and so he was left instinctively uneasy but unable to quite put his finger on how dangerous the situation might really have been.

At any rate that indefinite cryo-stasis plan was now ruined, as a result of Kirk’s intervention, and of all the recent public revelations.

Worse yet, from the look of things, even before a preliminary hearing took place, Starfleet’s judicial specialists analyzing the evidence and the charges could already tell that when the actual trial took place, Khan would likely be offered a probation program of sorts, contrary to everything any of them had initially expected or hoped for.

The admirals were naturally livid. They made it very clear to Kirk how they felt about the consequences of, in their words, _the fuck-up he’d caused._

Kirk had a history of getting chewed out by authority figures, but for once, nothing they might say could be worse than how hard he was kicking himself internally.

On one hand, freezing people indefinitely was deeply against Jim’s beliefs --he had always felt it was a fate worse than death-- but on the other hand...the current situation meant that Khan would possibly be out and about, with limited freedom but still potentially able to wreak havoc on innocent Starfleet personnel or civilians.

Jim’s plans had never accounted for this kind of possibility. He’d always believed the augment would be locked away, paying for his crimes in some place where he wouldn’t be endangering anyone.

But there was now too much of a push to rush this matter along as fast as possible, and to do things in an open and conciliatory manner, in order to repair the damage that had been done to Starfleet’s reputation. Far too many people in Command --with Section 31 or not-- had dirty hands and were afraid of getting caught. Too afraid to risk making a move to prevent that.

The only thing Jim could suggest to Barnett and Chandra, almost in an expiatory manner, was to offer to have Khan serve his probation on the Enterprise, starting during its refit if it came to that, rather than risk unleashing him on someone else’s ship.

Far from appeasing them, the offer was met with comments such as _“you are lucky you still have a ship at all”_ and _“you must have been out of your mind if you were thinking we’d stick him with anyone else but the one who caused this shitshow.”_

Neither Barnett nor Chandra were the kind of men who would stoop to the methods Marcus and some of his associates had used, far from it. But that didn’t mean they were bright-eyed-idealists either, and the damage the current situation was doing to Starfleet made them far less benevolent than they might otherwise be. They regarded the young Captain as well-intentioned but a reckless danger to the organization. If not for the needs of cajoling public opinion, especially right now, they would have sacked Kirk and sent him to a desk job in the farthest-away outpost possible, like they were already discreetly planning to do to his meddlesome friend Mendez --whom security camera footage had confirmed was to blame for Kirk sneaking into the trial in the first place.

They finished their sermon and dismissed Kirk with a few more admonishments and veiled threats, and soon he was on his unsteady way back to the hospital.

  
The only streak of optimism Jim had left on the matter was to hope that at least, with Khan under his supervision --and hopefully on his best behavior to try and earn his people that colony they were promised-- things might end up _maybe_ turning out okay. It might end up being a better option than leaving Khan and the others frozen in a warehouse somewhere, and back in the hands of Section 31 the moment the public scrutiny died down after the _Enterprise_ departed on its next mission.

For all that Barnett and Chandra’s plan might have seemed acceptable to them, Jim wasn’t convinced it would have ended in anything other than exactly that, once the people likely to ask inconvenient questions were far from the planet. He had no proof other than his nagging instinct, but his hunches often proved true.

That mild resurgence of optimism died off pretty fast once Jim started to think of how likely it might be that Khan would simply ignore the whole probation situation and unleash hell on his ship before murdering him and going in search of the frozen augments.

Jim would never forgive himself if the events he set in motion by his intervention at the trial ended up causing the death of anymore of the people around him.

 

 

 

* * *

**Stardate 2259.110**  
(April 20th 2259)

San Francisco

* * *

   
Khan held the plasticky piece of synthesized paper in his hand with some suspicion --those court _‘papers’_ were apparently always sent in this manner, as per some sort of tradition-- and regarded it as if it were a poisonous creature that might bite him at any moment, should he drop his guard.

He read it again, for the third time, then flipped it over and continued to stare at the small print on the back of it. By now, he had memorized the entire thing, but it still seemed unreal.

He couldn’t quite believe the sentence, even after hearing it in court at the end of the trial, and even after receiving this official confirmation ‘for his records’.

A part of him still expected everything to crumble to pieces at any time, even now. After how many times things had gone badly for him, he found it hard to believe anything good could come out of Starfleet without it being a trap.

Against everything Khan had thought might happen, things had gone even more positively than Kirk had initially implied. Section 31 was scrambling like rats on a sinking ship, and the trial had proceeded rapidly and without any issues.

Perhaps because by now, the insistent press scrutiny was at a paroxysm that was topped only by the wealth of evidence about Starfleet’s secret activities and prisoner mistreatment, so several members of Command had had to choose between throwing select elements of their secret branch under the proverbial bus, or risk falling with them.  
  
Their desperate urge to silence things before the press caught wind of even more dirt, such as everything Marcus had done with his attempts to start a war --and their current inability to simply cover it all up by executing Khan-- had them willing to cut deals the augment would never have been able to get from them, if not for how much had already been made public.

The Vulcan intervention at the initial trial, and the danger of the press getting wind of everything else were such, that things had radically changed. Even though of course, much of the top brass still strongly wished they could just shove Khan inside a deep dark cell underground and throw the key away.

In the end, a number of Section 31 members were made to judicially fall on their swords for the protection of the rest of the group, and Command worked out a number of behind-closed-doors arrangements to keep secret the worst of what Marcus had done --things that might start wars or damage the very fabric of the Federation if they became public knowledge.

Most of this did not concern Khan’s trial directly, but for the parts that did, he was made to sign a terribly binding non-disclosure agreement declaring much of the events of the past year as classified information. As one of the conditions, and to avoid even more scrutiny (although Starfleet claimed that was for the sake of _‘avoiding unnecessary panic in the population’,_ an age-old convenient excuse that had the augment rolling his eyes), they had settled upon not revealing the truth of Khan’s origins.

Command ended up cutting a deal that allowed Khan to spend his sentence under limited arrest conditions while working for Starfleet. The duration of it was potentially set for life if he misbehaved, but with regular evaluations and the premise that it would be compounded to a lower duration dependant on good behavior during the period of probation.

More importantly, the sentence made it official that, in the case of continued good behavior, the other augments would eventually be granted a colony on an unsettled planet, and that after sufficient time Khan could have his house-arrest moved to that location as well, allowing him to finally be with his people.

He remained highly skeptical as to this ever being a reality, but in the meantime, he would be serving his probation by cooperating and following Starfleet’s orders. He couldn’t risk damaging his people’s chances, however remote they may be.  
  
He was still technically a prisoner, but he would be allowed some limited mobility. It was much like house-and-work-arrest, where he could travel from his assigned dwelling to wherever Starfleet had him working, and move about in the immediate vicinity of both, so long as he kept to the authorized small radius around them. Exiting that radius without receiving permission from Starfleet beforehand would trigger an alert from the tracer on him, and would be considered an escape attempt on his record.  
It was a chain around his neck, much like when he was under Marcus, but it was better than being locked away in a cage, and above all else, there was no direct threat to his people’s survival this time.

Parts of Starfleet hoped that by having Khan serving in the fleet, they might retrieve at least some of what they lost, even though the probationary status and close press scrutiny wouldn’t allow them to make the augment recreate his designs for any of Marcus’ most secret or objectionable pet projects, many of which had been destroyed by the zeal of people hellbent on getting rid of everything that could incriminate them or their close associates.

The final outcome had both sides reach a compromise, even if it left both with a bad taste in their mouths and their hands tied when it came to the things they were discontent with.

Starfleet didn’t like it, because although avoiding an even worse scandal, they were on thin ice and couldn’t force Khan to do anything that could be legally objectionable. If anyone in the Federation got word again that a section of Starfleet was abusing what had been deemed a _‘member of a protected species’_ or forcing him to build illegal weaponry, there was no knowing what might find its way to the press next. The risk was too big. There were certainly countless individuals within the fleet who wanted revenge on him and might try something if they had a chance, but at least Command intended to try and avoid that.

And Khan didn’t like it, because he was their prisoner once more, something that filled him with loathing. But for the first time, he also had a tentative hope that his people might finally be given a chance, after all. That didn’t mean he trusted the Federation, there was no way he could bring himself to expect them not to turn against his people eventually, but a chance was a chance.

If they could be unfrozen and left free, they would find a way to prevail and survive. It was what augments were designed for doing better than anyone else, after all.  
  
He would do everything he could to ensure they had that chance. And when they were finally awake and had the time to catch up with the technological advances…no matter how closely guarded or unfavorable the colony planet may be, he knew his people would soon enough be able to develop planetary defenses and some form of deterrent to keep anyone --the Federation or others-- from viewing them as potential prey. At least for a little while. This would buy them time, and if they had to eventually escape and find a better planet, far from the Federation’s eyes, then they would still have been able to use the first colony as a starter base to learn and build.

It was a better outcome than them having to live on the run from the start, forever chased and hunted down until the very end of space. Fleeing had not worked out last time; this time they would try it differently.

He didn’t believe for one second that Starfleet would truly allow him to be reunited with his people --that would have to be a thing to plan for in the future, once his people were free to move and fight. But if there was even a chance that his cooperation with Starfleet might lead them to perhaps being granted that colony, he was willing to go through anything.

He’d meant every word he’d said in the first --the fake-- trial. As long as his cooperation was needed for the sake of his people, he would submit. He would have let the Federation use him as a slave if his people were given freedom. So the deal he got in the end was so much better than anything he could have hoped for before Kirk’s intervention.

  
Kirk could not guarantee Khan's personal safety. And indeed, he had never promised that, nor was it something Khan would have asked for. What Kirk had promised was something Khan valued infinitely more.

His people were safe. That had been Kirk's promise, and the young captain had kept it.

Nothing else mattered to Khan.

 

  
\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kirk had no way to know this at the time, but if he had never intervened in the trial, Khan and his crew would not have been executed, they would just have been frozen and everything would have happened like in STID and then Beyond. It's that event that set in motion everything else for the different situation in this fic. (Well, there's also the slash aspects, but well. ;D)
> 
> Also, Kirk feeling that freezing people indefinitely is a fate worse than death is an actual canon quote from TOS. It wasn't about Khan, but it's likely he'd feel the same way in the Kelvin timeline as well, if he knew what happened to the augments at the end of STID.
> 
> Mendez getting put in charge of an outpost was a thing that happened in TOS (and he was extremely knowledgeable, to the point that there's no way he wasn't with Section 31). Since I can't help shoving as many references to TOS as I can in fics, I linked it to them being pissed at him because of Jim's interference in the trial.
> 
> * * *
> 
> A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
> (Any butchering of the English language that you might spot is my own addition post-beta, and not her fault in any way.)
> 
> * * *
> 
> Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize me and motivate me to write more & update! :D ♥


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